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

April 24, 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 4.20.15:
QUICK MATCH RESULTS:
* Dean Ambrose vs. Luke Harper went to a No Contest
* The New Day d. The Lucha Dragons to win a WWE Tag Team Championship match
* Fandango d. Curtis Axel
* Naomi d. Brie Bella
* Sheamus d. Zack Ryder
* John Cena d. Kane in the U.S. Open Challenge
* The Miz d. Damian Mizdow to win the rights to the hugely prestigious ‘Miz’ brand
* Ryback d. Adam Rose
* Seth Rollins d. Dolph Ziggler

THE RIGHT:
Dean Ambrose vs. Luke Harper: This was really really good for a five minute match. If they can sustain this quality over, say, 15 minutes in their Street Fight at Extreme Rules, we have a genuine match of the year contender on our hands! These guys just tore into each other to the point where the referee throwing the match out because it was too darn wild and zany felt just as natural a finish as a pinfall or a submission. It was probably the highlight of the episode!

Curtis Axel is the new Fandango: He danced the fuck out of Fandango. Fandango won the petty one-minute match, but Axel won the war with his groovy pre match dancing. Why are there not GIFs of this popping up everywhere? (If Larry puts a GIF of it at the end of the article I retract my comment).

Zack Ryder vs. Sheamus: I am broadly in favor of the standard formula of a pro wrestling match being messed with as it was here, as Sheamus just beat the shit out of Ryder while simultaneously demeaning him with a promo until Dolph Ziggler snapped and made the save. An entertaining promo it was too from Sheamus, reminding us all that he hates the boy band wannabes of the wrestling world. I felt so sad for Ryder watching this though. Look what has become of him. Poor fellow.

puRgatoRy:
The Lucha Dragons vs. The New Day: The New Day continue to improve now that they’re sarcastically cheerful rule-breakers, although I’m impatient to see the Lucha Dragons wrestle Cesaro and Kidd so I’d rather have seen the masked men pick up the victory (did they have a match on Main Event a few weeks ago? Or am I imagining that? If it was real, was it properly good?) Cesaro is never more than two steps away from WWE deciding it would be a terrific move for his career if he had three of his limbs amputated, so we have to keep our fingers crossed he gets to wrestle the best wrestlers while he has the chance.

Naomi vs. Brie Bella: This was a solid, relatively lengthy face between two broadly underrated wrestlers, although the weird booking stifled it a bit. Extended heel vs. heel matches aren’t really common in the Divas Division, unless… are the Bellas inexplicably faces now? Hmmm. Anyway, with better-defined roles there’s probably a reasonably worthwhile match to be had between these two, but this came off a bit muted despite good efforts from both women.

Roman Reigns beats up Bo Dallas: A perfectly OK of distracting us from the grim reality that Roman Reigns and the Big Show will have a match this Sunday at Extreme Rules. A Last Man Standing match no less, a match that practically guarantees prolonged periods of lying down or standing around, doing nothing in particular. Dallas had a great line about The Phantom Menace being the best Star Wars film and it was a shame no one seemed to care about it. It was at least a fresh pairing of wrestlers though, and was over in a breeze.

The Rain in Spain Falls Mainly on Kane: Tough old week for the Big Red Monster. Berated by Rollins, mocked by J & J Security, defeated by John Cena in the U.S. Open Challenge. But! He will get to be at ringside during the Steel Cage match, so you’d imagine he’ll directly end up deciding the winner of that one. I know this sounds obvious, but I feel like this current angle with Kane is much more rewarding if you have more tolerance left for him than I do. It’s really not a bad storyline, not badly conceived and not badly performed, but I struggle to care about where it goes because Kane has been on our screens for 18 straight years essentially and there comes a point where you can’t do anything that feels special or unique anymore. His furious tirade against Rollins where he suggested El Torito could have been World Champion with the Authority’s backing was a great bit of unhinged fury, and the bout with Cena wasn’t too bad at all for a bout that seemed inspired by the Champ’s WrestleMania 21 outing with JBL. It all leaves me fairly cold, though.

Ryback vs. Adam Rose: You know how this goes. Ryback’s mockery of the Rosebuds was pretty funny though. “It’s funny because it’s food!”

Dolph Ziggler vs. Seth Rollins: A pretty fun main event, although Ziggler-Rollins is the kind of match that sounds outstanding on paper and never quiiiite delivers, it’s never an actively bad match but they don’t seem to complement each other the way the best pairings do. Maybe it’s just because they always wrestle within the constraints of free TV. Anyway, yeah, this wasn’t really high-level stuff but there were some good near falls at least. Rollins’ new finisher is the worst though. It’s the sort of thing one of the Natural Born Thrillers would have used in 2000. I’m not sure what the argument is against the Curb Stomp? Has it caused any injuries that I’m forgetting?

THE wRong:
Randy Orton and Seth Rollins will be wrestling at Extreme Rules: Indeed they will! And it will probably be a pretty good bout, although Steel Cage matches always feel a bit safe and under whelming these days, and they’ll have to be careful to work in RKO teases without it becoming an annoying trope. Unfortunately, the final build to Rollins’ first WWE Championship defense was lackluster. The show opened with a fine but forgettable promo by Orton in which he was all “I reckon I will win at Extreme Rules and I’m not so keen on the Seth Rollins,” and finished with the Viper assaulting the champion inside a conveniently lowered cage. More time was spent developing the drama with Kane, and it kind of feels like there’s too many gimmicks surrounding the PPV bout- it’s inside a Steel Cage, Kane is the gatekeeper, the RKO is banned… with a bit of effort they could have developed a decent plotline from anyone of those, but instead they’re throwing all three of them at us when they have only been baked about 35% each. Bleh.

Tough Enough is coming back: Who watches Tough Enough? Tough Enough is shit. It’s the most boring fucking thing. I would rather watch Randy Orton give a series of hour-long lectures on the precise mechanics of a chinlock, complete with demonstrations. I hope no one applies to Tough Enough and the show has to be tweaked so it’s all about Triple H learning to go through the turnbuckles into the ring post (did you read Triple H can’t figure out how to go through the turnbuckles into the ring post? I think it’s the cutest story, and it’s really interesting that even the most seasoned pro wrestlers have things they can’t get their heads around). Anyway, Tough Enough? Boooooo. Down with this sort of thing.

The Miz vs. Damian Mizdow: I think a fair few people suspected WWE might not be able to sustain the momentum of the Miz/Mizdow partnership, but I doubt anyone would have seriously thought their big, feud ending match would be tossed out in five minutes in the death slot of Raw, and largely exist to facilitate an odd Summer Rae angle. A disappointing end to a fun chapter in Sandow’s career. He should probably try and stay away from Sheamus on a long-term basis.

THE Ridiculous:
NOTHING

The 411:

This was the most middling episode of Raw. Nothing all that bad. Nothing all that good. Extreme Rules will probably be fine although a few of the matches could be hamstrung by their silly stipulations. I hope the rest of 2015 is a lot more noteworthy than this.

Show Rating: 5.0

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 983rd edition is over…

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THE NEW HORSEMEN!

article topics :

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