wrestling / Columns

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

December 19, 2014 | 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 12.15.14:
QUICK MATCH RESULTS:
* Luke Harper & The Big Show d. Dolph Ziggler & Erick Rowan
* Natalya & Alicia Fox d. The Bella Twins
* The New Day d. Goldust & Stardust
* Kane d. Adam Rose
* Jimmy Uso d. The Miz
* Seth Rollins d. John Cena in a Steel Cage Match

THE RIGHT:
Raw is Jericho. No, for real this time. Because Chris Jericho was GM for the evening, you see: Raw began as it always does- with a lengthy in ring talking segment to set the agenda for the evening. This one was perfectly tolerable though, with the ever-charismatic Jericho holding things together nicely. An enjoyable exchange between Y2J and Paul Heyman about a missing $200 led to Jericho making a match between the two for later on in the evening, and he also booked a rematch between Seth Rollins and John Cena inside a Steel Cage, much to Rollins’ dismay. It was hardly vital viewing, but it passed by easily enough, and Jericho’s personality is strong enough to make him feel different from other Raw hosts, even if he is booking the exact same matches. His joke about the ninja catering guy was pretty funny by this show’s standards. At this time of the year you just want the episodes to be simple, unchallenging, breezy fun, and that’s the tone this opening set for the rest of the show.

Brock Lesnar is a nasty piece of work: So Jericho never got his revenge for the missing $200, as the devious Heyman had an ace up his sleeve. You can probably guess what that ace was and how things progressed from his appearance. Brock took out Jericho with an F5, and reminded us all that he ain’t the Lesnar to mess with. The best part of this segment was Heyman’s ‘Jew-Jitsu’ line, but Lesnar’s return itself was pretty exciting and impactful, and Jericho is good cannon fodder for him.

Jimmy Uso vs. The Miz: I continue to like what they’re doing with this storyline, although it feels like they’re rushing it along a bit, they could use some of the subtlety that the Tyson Kidd-Natalya angle has. This week, Jimmy Uso tore into the Miz in a surprisingly good singles match, and pinned him after interference from his brother Jey in what was a slyly heelish touch (having just complained about the lack of subtlety in the angle!) Afterwards, The Miz came across Naomi backstage and re-expressed his desire to help her career, even offering her a slot on Main Event’s MizTV. All this is logical and quite heated for a midcard angle, and I think anyone whose ever felt jealousy when someone shows too much of an interest in their significant other will be able to relate to it. That’s something I think Raw really misses nowadays, the ability to play on simple, universal themes from the everyday lives of their viewers. Another benefit of this angle is that it gives Damian Mizdow plenty of time to shine, but the comedy is both genuinely funny and not cloying and overwhelming and howled at incessantly by infuriating announcers. So, yeah. I like all of this.

puRgatoRy:
Dolph Ziggler & Erick Rowan vs. The Big Show & Luke Harper: This match would have benefited from another speedier athlete like Ziggler in there- maybe Rollins could have teamed with Harper, and then Cena and Show could have headlined with a much shorter cage match. It felt a bit unbalanced as it was; Ziggler took an entertaining beating, but when he wasn’t involved the pace became a bit thick and mushy. It was an OK opener though, albeit between wrestlers who there is increasingly less reason to care about.

Natalya & Alicia Fox vs. The Bella Twins: Another passable Divas segment. I fear that Kidd attempting to help the injured Nikki Bella is going to lead to some dreadfully acted soap opera drama in a week or two, but we’ll cross that bridge when it comes to it. There wasn’t much memorable about this match, but that’s better than it being actively bad, I guess.

The Highlight Reel w/Rusev: If you’re a seething, unhappy young male who wants women you don’t like to be laughed at and branded prostitutes, you must get so excited every time Lana has to run into some returning star from the late nineties. Chris Jericho invited the Russians onto his talk show and it was his worst contribution of the evening; even in segments like this his sheer enthusiasm makes him endearing, but his barbs at Rusev and Lana weren’t very good, and the rule-breakers got far too upset by them. I wish they’d show this much vulnerability against a regular member of the roster. Ryback came out eventually to chase them away and it was actually pretty exciting; I’m always impressed as to how WWE are capable of making every new Rusev challenger seem like the guy who will finally end his undefeated streak, even if past evidence suggests they definitely won’t be. A mixed bag of a segment!

Adam Rose vs. Kane: Hey, a Jimmy Jacobs cameo! Cool. This was essentially just a squash but is probably the best use of Kane at this stage in his career, as a violent straight man baffled and angered by the weirdos around him.

John Cena vs. Seth Rollins: A main event of ups and downs. I was darn excited for this match, and once they’d broken through the tentative, formulaic opening stages, it seemed to be delivering. There were some good near falls, a few near escapes, a fair bit of intensity- everything was going along really well. Then the match started to drag on a bit, and we reached a stage where Seth Rollins was just standing over Cena barking abuse at him, and it became apparent they’d ran out of ideas. But then! They pulled it together for the finishing stretch, delivered a heck of a moment with the huge Attitude Adjustment off the top rope, and seemed to be building to a strong conclusion. Unfortunately, that conclusion was just Brock Lesnar coming in and suplexing Cena all around the ring. I don’t understand why they would have such a long match and not resolve it cleanly- it’s fine in shorter bouts to finish with interference or a DQ or something, but only a decisive ending makes a grand, epic Steel Cage match seem completely satisfying. I did like the way Rollins’ won, strolling down the steel steps while Mercury and Noble wildly cheered as if he were about to win a marathon, a marathon in which Brock Lesnar hadn’t eaten all the other competitors. The prospect of a Rollins-Heyman alliance, cemented by a handshake, is pretty interesting- there was a definitely a lot of good to the segment. But the not very definitive finish made the lulls in the bout even more egregious, and I think I’ve now seen enough Cena-Lesnar matches for a good few years.

THE wRong:
The New Day vs. Goldust & Stardust: Throwing two midcard tag teams out for a needlessly lengthy match is not a recipe for good TV. Everyone involved in this bout is varying degrees of talented, but we’ve been given little reason to care about their characters, and as such the crowd trudged between disinterest and outright hostility towards the action. It wasn’t an awful match. There were a few nice, pacey sequences, and the combination of Big E’s power and Xavier or Kofi’s speed gives the New Day a good dynamic to work with in their matches, but they just couldn’t overcome the outside factors working against this one. It was a really good five minute match between two really over tag teams, doubled in length and halved in relevance.

The Big Show confronts Roman Reigns: The way WWE have used Roman Reigns since he split from the Shield is really fascinating, especially in comparison to how John Cena was booked in the aftermath of his very first WWE Championship reign. It seems an apt comparison; two muscular, good looking talents with obvious upsides who WWE have a huge amount of faith in, on the road to bonafide superstardom. After seeing off JBL to win the belt, Cena was counter-productively booked against a string of hugely popular, obviously talented bad guys- first Chris Jericho, then Kurt Angle, then Edge. He was made to look hideously, hatefully invulnerable to all of them, and the fans started to boo him- they haven’t stopped in a decade. The thing with Roman Reigns is that the exact same thing is happening, before he’s even won the title this time, except the people who he’s running roughshod over aren’t internet darlings like Cena’s conquests were- they’re your Randy Ortons, your Kanes, your Big Shows. This isn’t leading to thrilling segments or matches, but it is at least stopping the vocal and influential minority of the crowd from turning on Reigns en masse, because the alternatives are even less exciting. Meanwhile, the majority who are still really into Reigns are definitely making their voices heard. In one respect, WWE seem to have learned from their mistakes during the genesis of Cena as a star, but they’re just papering over the cracks. I’ll be very interested to see what happens if Reigns has to get past, say, either of his former Shield partners to win the Rumble, or even what the balance of popularity would be like in a Reigns-Lesnar match. As that whole diatribe might have indicated, I’m not really into Reigns as a singles wrestler, or his feud with the Big Show. It’s plodding and predictable and is going to lead to a really shit match at some point. This week Reigns flattened Fandango (the pacing of this was rather odd, by the way- we saw Fandango’s entrance in punishing detail, and then like two seconds later Reigns was punching him in the face and that was that) and then he had a confrontation with Show. It’s all not really compelling.

THE Ridiculous:
NOTHING

THE RAW MATCH OF THE YEAR LIST:
No change.

  1. 3.03.14- The Shield vs. The Wyatt Family
  2. 2.17.14- John Cena vs. Cesaro
  3. 5.5.14- The Shield vs. The Wyatt Family
  4. 2.03.14- Daniel Bryan vs. Randy Orton
  5. 2.10.14- Sheamus & Christian vs. The Real Americans
  6. 1.27.14- John Cena, Sheamus & Daniel Bryan vs. The Shield
  7. 6.2.14- The Usos vs. The Wyatt Family
  8. 27.10.14- John Cena vs. Seth Rollins
  9. 8.18.14- Dean Ambrose vs. Seth Rollins
  10. 4.21.14- Sheamus vs. Bad News Barrett

The 411:

A step up from last week’s episode, with Chris Jericho’s presence leading to a couple of good segments, and a main event that was noteworthy at the very least, even if it did drag. It’s not particularly inspiring TV, but what do you expect from the festive season? Watch it as background noise, that’s the best way to enjoy these dark, winter Raws.

Show Rating: 6.0

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 948th edition is over…

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article topics :

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