wrestling / Columns

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

May 15, 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 5.11.15:
QUICK MATCH RESULTS:
* Dean Ambrose d. J&J Security
* King Barrett d. Dolph Ziggler
* Erick Rowan d. Fandango
* John Cena d. Neville in the U.S. Open
* Tamina d. Brie Bella
* Damian ‘Macho’ Mandow vs. Curtis Axel went to a no contest
* Cesaro d. Big E
* Randy Orton d. Seth Rollins via DQ

THE RIGHT:
John Cena vs. Neville: This was a superb match and probably the best installment of the U.S. Open series, although the emotion of Cena-Zayn gave it that something. Cena is quietly putting together an impressive body of work to submit to the ‘Wrestler of the Year’ committee in December, he and his title defenses are usually the best part of Raw and he’s getting people over and convincing us all he’s in imminent danger of losing his championship even though we all know full well he’s not. Of course, he’s very much helped out by a string of quality opponents; Neville put on the best performance of his short spell on the main roster in this match. The Springboard Corkscrew Tope thing he pulled out was just dazzling. He’s incredible fun to watch. Two complaints- people are kicking out of the Attitude Adjustment a little too frequently in these matches, and they’ve made the extension of the Cena-Rusev feud a total afterthought. Rusev’s interference to derail the match and quite possibly deny Neville a huge upset was a gut punch in a good way, but it almost feels like Neville himself is the more natural opponent for him, considering the plucky challenger was about half a second away from winning off the Red Arrow. The Cena-Rusev issue feels finished, settled, but nope Cena’s going to win for a third time this Sunday for no apparent reason whether you like it or not. Still, the match itself was ace, the best thing on the show by far.

Cesaro vs. Big E: The New Day are fucking superb. I couldn’t help but giggle at their colossal misreading of the Cincinnati crowd, who they felt would be pleased to hear Daniel Bryan’s career might be over, and even more pleased that this tremendous announcement was being followed up by an appearance favorite wrestlers, The New Day! Xavier Woods yelped that he knew Cincinnati wasn’t “like all those other towns” and would definitely join in with the “New Day Rocks!” chant and not pervert it into some kind of slander about them sucking. Whenever the New Day’s music hits, I’m hopeful something really entertaining is about to happen, and usually something does. Even four weeks ago that would have been a bizarre statement to make. What a heel turn! And then Big E and Cesaro had a deeply nifty power battle, with Cesaro getting to show off all his fired up mega cool good guy power ups, and polish off the match with this crazy intricate roll-up. Just a good time from start to finish, and a welcome tonic to the depressing Daniel Bryan segment it had to follow.

puRgatoRy:
More Tension in the Authority: A standard opening to Raw, with some guys standing in the ring arguing and then belching out a match that’s gonna happen RIGHT NOW! This week it was focused around Triple H sneering at all his goons and Kane and Seth Rollins falling out again, neither of which made for particularly invigorating viewing. They’ve set the groundwork effectively for the eventual Rollins-Kane match, which is presumably penciled in for Money in the Bank, but they’ve done it too early and now both guys are just spinning their wheels and teasing fights before backing down. There were some nice individual moments that lifted the segment out of any kind of mire though. I liked Seth’s incredulity that the Cincinnati crowd would be so thrilled just to hear the name of their hometown boy Dean Ambrose, but the best bit was undoubtedly Jamie Noble standing up to Triple H as he berated Rollins, a terrific bit of character work that suggested an eventual J&J Security face turn of some kind could actually work. I’m not sure precisely how, but hey, don’t tell me you weren’t bellowing “YES JAMIE!” at the TV screen while Noble himself was bellowing at Triple H and defending his boss.

Dean Ambrose vs. J&J Security: A reasonably fun, lightweight handicap match in which Ambrose meandered past J&J with little difficulty. Since two thirds of the match weren’t full time wrestlers it was obviously never going to be anything substantial, but Noble and Mercury still have a great sense of what to do in the ring. There was a cool spot where Ambrose and Mercury clashed heads, and Noble was tagged in while Dean was slumped on the canvas. Then, just as Jamie was about to go on the attack, Ambrose popped right back to his feet and went on the attack. It was like he’d hot tagged himself! Good old Ambrose.

Erick Rowan vs. Fandango: A quick squash from Erick Rowan, who is now paired with Luke Harper again, a duo to be feared. The break-up of the Wyatt Family has done nothing for any of them, so I think it can only be a positive that Harper and Rowan have re-aligned themselves, they’ll add some much needed bodies to the tag division at the very least.

Reigns and Kane battle it out: Triple H booked this match to ensure Kane was ‘invested’ in the build to Payback, which seems a bit unfair because I don’t think anybody is invested in the build to Payback. Kane’s probably just as sick as the Dolph Ziggler-Sheamus feud as the rest of us but we don’t have to wrestle Roman Reigns. Anyway, they wisely decided to eschew an actual match and brawl so ferociously the bell simply could not be rung. It was moderately entertaining. Reigns came out on top.

Brie Bella vs. Tamina: This was passable. The feud between Naomi and The Bellas is starting to feel more coherent now after the inanity of the initial Naomi heel turn, and adding Tamina as a bodyguard/cousin figure gives it a smidgen more depth. It’s not thrilling or anything, but as far as WWE Divas’ feuds go it isn’t actively bad.

The Megapowers vs. The Road Warriors: Damian Sandow is Randy Savage now! It demonstrates how fucking incredible Savage was that two separate high profile wrestlers have now built gimmicks around mimicking every aspect of his on screen character in recent years. Sandow does a passable impression, the idea of teaming him with Curtis Axel is cute, and the interference from The Ascension is the sort of subtle allusion to their Demolition/Legion of Doom influences they should have done from the start, rather than just having them cut promos that went like “THE LEGION OF DOOM! DEMOLITION! THE POWERS OF PAIN! PLEASE NOTE THE SIMILARITIES BETWEEN US AS THEY JUSTIFY OUR EXISTENCE!” It’s entertaining enough to fill up three minutes or so a week for the next couple of weeks, although the joke will get beaten into the ground fairly quickly.

Words from Wyatt: Bray Wyatt said some things and while it wasn’t significantly better or more interesting than his usual, the references to the economy and taunting children with the revelation that everything is shit at least grounded the promo in reality and gave us something to actually cling onto. Ryback’s appearance got a decent reaction and seemed fairly exciting. Could have been worse.

Randy Orton vs. Seth Rollins: A paint by numbers main event. Orton and Seth Rollins both brim with talent so obviously this was a solid match, but considering they headlined the last PPV, a singles match on Raw would always feel like a step down. They went back and forth in fairly entertaining fashion for a bit and then J&J Security interfered to end the match, triggering essentially the same ending as last week- all the Payback main events hitting finishers on each other. Dean Ambrose stood tall after dropping Roman Reigns with Dirty Deeds. Ehhh.

wRong:
Dolph Ziggler vs. King Barrett: I’ve had my fill of meaningless matches between Ziggler and Barrett for a lifetime; the only things different from this and their previous Raw and Smackdown midcard encounters (incidentally, ‘Midcard Encounters’ is the name of WWE’s forthcoming erotic fiction series) were a frustrating distraction finish involving Sheamus and Ziggler making some strange decisions with his make-up. None of these three are being utilized to their full potential.

THE REALLY REALLY DESPERATELY SAD:
Bad News Bryan: For the second time in less than a year, Daniel Bryan has had to vacate a major championship because of serious injury. The career of the best (and also nicest) pro wrestler since I don’t know when hangs in the balance and objectively we can all agree that’s utterly terrible on every level. There’s not much more to be said. I hope this isn’t it for him but I also really hope he remains capable of walking for the entirety of his life. I’m glad I got to see him wrestle live once. I’m really keen on the idea that everything will work out for him, one way or another.

THE Ridiculous:
NOTHING

The 411:

A pronounced step down from last week, but the Cena-Neville match was terrific and gave the show a real boost. I also enjoyed the antics of the New Day. I did not enjoy Ziggler-Barrett and Daniel Bryan’s career perhaps being over. Everything else I was pretty much ambivalent towards. This is what Raw is like in 2015.

Show Rating: 6.4

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 989th edition is over…

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article topics :

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