wrestling / Columns

Wrestling’s 4Rs: The Right, Wrong and Ridiculous of WWE Raw

March 20, 2015 | Posted by Jack Stevenson

How the 4Rs of wRestling Work!
Here is a quick explanation of the 4R’s. The column will run TWO times a week. We will group our feelings on the shows in various categories: The Right, the wRong and the Ridiculous. The Right is stuff that worked very well: a great promo, a great match and so on. PuRgatoRy is a section between the right and wrong. It shows equal traits from both sides that cannot be ignored and needs discussed. It is not a bad place per say, as things can get remedied or go the wrong way the very next week. The wRong is what it sounds like: bad matches, bad or boring promos and so on. The Ridiculous is stuff that had no right on TV: Stupid angles and so on. And there is always a possibility of a 5th R, which is as bad as they come. This column is supposed to be analytical, and at the right time very critical of the shows, it was the whole reason it was created. This is not a “mark” column, nor a “smark” column, our goal is to analyze the show from many different fronts, reward the good and call out the bad. We will not apologize for our opinions, they are as they are, whether positive or negative.


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By: Jack Stevenson


Raw 3.16.15:
QUICK MATCH RESULTS:
* Nikki Bella d. AJ Lee
* Ryback d. The Miz
* Kidd & Cesaro d. The New Day
* Daniel Bryan, Dolph Ziggler & Dean Ambrose d. Stardust, Bad News Barrett & Luke Harper

THE RIGHT:
The Authority Have a Plan: Is it just me, or has the Randy Orton-Seth Rollins match kind of been the main focus of Raw over the past few weeks? While Smackdown has dedicated itself to building the Intercontinental Championship match, it feels like each Monday night we get multiple segments building anticipation for the battle of the Authority’s past and the Authority’s future, while the supposed WrestleMania main event, Reigns-Lesnar, relies on one Paul Heyman promo a week for all its storyline advancement. I’m not complaining because Orton-Rollins will surely be the best of the WrestleMania singles matches, both guys are bringing plenty of fire to the feud and deserve their spotlight, but it definitely seems a rather weird quirk of this incredibly weird WrestleMania build. Anyway, this week’s developments were up and down in quality. With Raw as close as it will ever get to being in his home town on Davenport, Iowa, Rollins began the show with a superb opening line to the fans that were loyally cheering his name: “You chant my name now, but I know you all loved that (a video of Orton’s assault on Seth from last week), didn’t ya?” It turned the crowd against him quickly and had the benefit of being entirely true! He and the rest of the Authority then spoke of their loathing for Orton, and Rollins agreed to face him at WrestleMania if Randy in turn agreed to meet him in the main event of Raw. At this point, you might be sensing that something was up. And you’d be right! Over the course of the evening, The Authority seemed to be collapsing as the self-absorbed Rollins alienated all his stablemates with his whiny blame game. However, come the main event, they revealed that they still liked each other, and their arguments were all a trick! A completely nonsensical trick! Orton outright stated in accepting Seth’s challenge for the main event that he knew there was a chance he’d catch a beat down, so trying to hide it from him by performing this elaborate charade was a completely useless endeavor. And in the end, Sting made a surprise appearance and helped Randy clean house anyway, so it was a properly bad night for the Authority on the whole. I liked the opening promo (especially Jamie Noble’s insistence in it that he is widely considered “the secret weapon of the Authority) but felt the angle building to the main event was a bit predictable and unnecessary. The novelty of seeing Sting appear on Raw still hasn’t quite worn off though, and once he and Orton started to kick arse and take names all the less worthwhile events of the evening were redeemed.

Brock and Heyman have things to say: Brock Lesnar gave us a rare insight into the machinations of his mind in a cool little sit down interview/video package hybrid. Nothing revelatory was said, just that he liked hurting people and was really good at the wrestling and had proven both of those things in the past, but it was a good, quietly powerful production nonetheless. Paul Heyman then came out and cut a typically entertaining promo about Lesnar being essentially unstoppable, filling it with his usual quirky metaphors and encountering microphone trouble once again in a funny bit of continuity. Roman Reigns came out to confront him and cut a thoroughly respectable promo outlining his belief that he’d win the championship at WrestleMania. He signed off with his new “I can. I will” catchphrase which I think is actually pretty good and sharp. There wasn’t anything mind-blowing to this, but it was good, solid work. Too little too late to give this rivalry the kick up the bottom it desperately needs, but an enjoyable segment in its own right.

Daniel Bryan, Dean Ambrose & Dolph Ziggler vs. Bad News Barrett, Stardust & Luke Harper: A heck of a lot of talent in this match! They put on a really fun six man as well, one that made me nostalgic for the halycon days of, um, 2014, when the Shield would have a great one of these weekly and sometimes the Wyatts would as well. The finishing stretch was exciting and in a shocking turn of events Daniel Bryan looked the bees knees. R-Truth sat on commentary with the Intercontinental Championship clipped to his back to hide it from the other wrestlers, which was pretty clever and funny. He inevitably ended up losing it though, and everyone traded possession of the belt until Bad News Barrett started throwing bull hammers and got the title back. It was quite a fun farce!

puRgatoRy:
AJ Lee vs. Nikki Bella: This was one of the longer Divas matches on Raw in recent memory, stretching for just over ten minutes and not entirely decimated by commercials either. This is a step in the right direction! The match itself wasn’t spectacular and their attempt at developing the actual feud surrounding the bout was limited to a brief brawl between Brie and Paige at ringside, and AJ being distracted by her partner getting sent into the ring post, allowing Nikki to snag the victory off a Rack Attack. But there have definitely been worse showings for the ladies on Raw, that’s for sure.

Ryback vs. The Miz: Not much to this at all, although they squeezed in a bit of a fracas between Miz and Mizdow before Ryback inevitably flattened the A-Lister. I liked Ryback holding Miz back for Mizdow and offering him a free shot, it made the Big Guy look good and created a nice moment of tension before Damien rejected the offer. He might have regretted doing so after Miz took out his frustrations on him post match with a Skull Crushing Finale!

Kidd & Cesaro vs. The New Day: I’m not sure I see the point in giving the New Day a victory over the tag champions if they’re going to get soundly beaten by the champions in a rematch the very next week. The match was alright. Kidd and Cesaro showed some super clapping skills in their pre match picture in picture promo.

The Big Show vs. Erick Rowan: A short beatdown instead of a match to reassert the Big Show’s credibility, since his character has taken a somewhat comedic turn in recent weeks. He dropped a fairly impressive elbow off the top rope, which Michael Cole felt was just too far! It’s a completely legal move, Cole! I’ve been hearing rumors that this ain’t ballet.

The Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal almost happens on Raw: Kane invited assorted cannon fodder to the ring to get thrown over the top rope in case anyone had forgotten that in a battle royal humans are thrown over the top rope. Mark Henry joined the fray, and Curtis Axel had a nice moment for himself by eliminating the Big Red Monster, before the World’s Strongest Man dumped him out in turn to win this match or unsanctioned brawl or angle or whatever it was. An adequate piece of build-up, although the Intercontinental Championship Ladder Match is fulfilling the “get a bunch of people on the card” spot this year, so the field for this match is noticeably depleted.

THE wRong:
Cena and Rusev’s contract signing: Oh dear. I’m not a huge fan of Lana, sometimes I think she’s annoying in a “get off my screen” way rather than a “I wish someone would just shut you up!” way, but they really really needed her here, because in her absence to film some WWE Studios thing, they brought in a “Russian lawyer” to back Rusev up in the contract signing. You have probably heard by now that he was absolutely terrible and in possession of the single most bizarre Russian accent that has ever been heard on television. It was a total joke and derailed the segment. Not that there’s much to derail in a contract signing, among the most boring of the wrestling tropes, a half hearted attempt at stringing together a dueling promo and a little brawl and trying to pretend it’s something more than the sum of its shoddy parts. We didn’t even get a proper brawl here, and there was no drama to Rusev’s threats not to sign the contract because we all knew he would. This was shambolic.

THE Ridiculous:
NOTHING

The 411:

There was more good than bad on this show! But the amount of middling stuff outstripped the clear positives and negatives by quite a way, and that’s alarming considering there is one episode of Raw left before WrestleMania. They should be firing on all cylinders by this point, but key rivalries like Reigns/Lesnar and HHH/Sting still feel nowhere near complete. There was barely any wrestling on this show- four matches, two of which were very short, plus a couple of in ring angles that closely resembled actual bouts but weren’t. If there’s one positive that can be taken from previous WrestleManias, it’s that you only really need two or three high quality matches to carry the show along, as long as the other ones aren’t actively appalling or anything. So, if Orton/Rollins, the Ladder match, and maybe Cena/Rusev deliver, it could still turn out a properly good show. The build up has done little to help it though.

Show Rating: 5.5

As a reminder, I will be going by the 411 scale…

0 – 0.9: Torture
1 – 1.9: Extremely Horrendous
2 – 2.9: Very Bad
3 – 3.9: Bad
4 – 4.9: Poor
5 – 5.9: Not So Good
6 – 6.9: Average
7 – 7.9: Good
8 – 8.9:Very Good
9 – 9.9: Amazing
10: Virtually Perfect

The 973rd edition is over…

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article topics :

RAW, Wrestling's 4Rs, WWE, Jack Stevenson