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

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 5.25.15:
QUICK MATCH RESULTS:
* Dean Ambrose & Roman Reigns d. Seth Rollins & Kane
* Rusev d. R-Truth
* Ryback d. King Barrett
* Neville d. Stardust
* Sheamus d. Dolph Ziggler
* John Cena d. Zack Ryder
* Tamina d. Paige
* The New Day d. All the other tag teams in the Elimination Chamber match via DQ in a 10 on 3 Handicap Match

THE Right:
John Cena vs. Zack Ryder: The best segment of this week’s Raw began in the worst possible way. Well, OK, the worst possible way is probably “mass genocide,” but one of the worst possible ways- John Cena reading from his bad promo script and telling us all, in nauseatingly saccharine fashion, that his fan base are like his “family” and that they have “a bond that can never be broken.” I get that when you’re a mega star fan favorite of a product that is to an extent aimed at children, you’re going to have to get schmaltzy from time to time, but part of the reasons these sort of lines are so grating is that we hear them all the gosh darn time. It’s even more infuriating because pretty quickly after this, he transitioned into a terrific promo on Kevin Owens! He pitched the match as a battle of “Let’s Go Cena!” vs. “Fight Owens Fight!” and in doing so might have manufactured a terrific atmosphere for their hopefully terrific match at Elimination Chamber. John Cena: the best worst worst best promo on the roster. Anyway, after that was all done, it was time for the U.S. Open, and being as Raw was emanating from Long Island, it fell to Zack Ryder to answer the challenge. This presented a quandary; how to have the exciting, even, near fall heavy kind of contest that has typified these open challenges ,without making Cena look incredibly weak in taking 15 minutes and an unreasonable amount of effort to polish off a man who is essentially a jobber. I thought they came up with a pretty good workaround all things considered- Cena won the match inside five minutes, but not before Ryder had snagged a couple of razor sharp two counts after ‘The Champ’ was distracted by some guy from ‘Entourage’ running in the ring. It was an incredibly fun little contest. And then, to top it all off, Kevin Owens slithered into the ring after the match and embarrassed Cena by repeating his attack from last week, the pop up powerbomb preceding a disrespectful stamp on the United States Championship belt. Super!
Dean Ambrose & Roman Reigns vs. Seth Rollins & Kane: I rolled my eyes when this match was announced because it’s the absolute essence of WWE’s main event formula, four guys floating around the main event scene, paired off in tag team action for no other reason than it’s a match that has the potential to exist. But, by the finishing stretch involving Ambrose and Rollins, I realized I was pretty into this bout. Maybe it was just a great finishing stretch, but then, I think Ambrose and Reigns always look like they’re having a blast teaming together, and there was a decent amalgamation of styles in the ring, so it’s not like it didn’t have some things going for it. I also really liked how Roman Reigns was used on the whole in this episode. One of the reasons so many turned against him at the turn of the year was that it felt like he was being placed on a pedestal higher than anyone else’s, so having him act as Dean Ambrose’s selfless back-up for a couple of weeks is a nice way to remind us that actually he can be pretty darn likeable when he wants to. In the end, I had no problem with this existing and could probably have done with another five minutes of it.

puRgatoRy:
Ryback vs. King Barrett: This was an adequate big man match but both men are desperately lacking in momentum. The Elimination Chamber match has been really bad news for the Intercontinental Championship scene, they should really have run a series of qualifiers to decide the entrants but instead just put them in arbitrarily and left them to float around aimlessly for a couple of weeks. Nobody is coming into this match with any mojo.

Neville vs. Stardust: Neville beat Stardust in a short match but then had his injured knee targeted by the deceptively upbeat Bo Dallas in a fine continuation of their little feud. It’s really nice to see Dallas doing actual things, but it bodes badly for Stardust that he’s fallen below the true Bo-liever in the midcard shuffle. He seemed to be starting a feud with Stephen Amell from Arrow at ringside, which is a… different direction.

Paige vs. Tamina: Tamina is not the best professional wrestler, but Paige is really really good. As such, this balanced out OK, with Naomi interfering to give her ally the victory. Paige is hopefully on her way to the Divas Championship. Tamina is hopefully on her way to either standing around at ringside doing little more than looking intimidating, or some really intensive lessons from Finlay.

10 on 3 Handicap Action for the New Day: Kane decided he was fed up of The New Day’s constant cheerfulness, and tried to temper it by shoving them into a massive handicap match against 10 men. In the end, though, they ended up winning via disqualification thanks to one of those annoying finishes where everyone starts fighting and the poor old referee can’t cope. Ordinarily rule breakers being blatantly disadvantaged by authority figures makes for shoddy storytelling, but Kane is exactly the kind of person that would utterly loathe the New Day and I like the implication that not everyone in WWE magically gets along within their face/heel categories. Plus, the match was so short it was impossible for the numbers disadvantage to make Xavier, Kofi and Big E look too sympathetic. Of course, the flipside of that is that the match was too short to go anywhere at just 50 seconds in length, so this settles in purgatory.

THE wRong:
Dean Ambrose is silly: Last week, Dean Ambrose earned himself a WWE Championship match by threatening to crush Seth Rollins’ head through some cinder blocks if he wasn’t given one. Rollins was very angry about this- I like to believe his blissful ignorance of the fact that the despicable tactics Ambrose used to get the match were the exact same ones he himself employed to get the Authority’s job back is a deliberate character choice, and not just a happy accident brought on by WWE’s sleepwalking creative team. The Authority pointed out that Ambrose hadn’t officially signed a contract to get his desired title shot, and he’d have to find a way to do so by the end of the night in order to set the match in stone, because none of the powers that be were going to help by setting up a convenient contract signing segment or anything. Ambrose came out to the entrance stage, insults were exchanged, and a tag team match was set-up. So far, so average, but things really went off the rails after Ambrose and Roman Reigns had polished off Rollins and Kane in that match. In a backstage segment, J & J Security taunted ‘The Lunatic Fringe’ about his contract predicament, and predictably got beaten up as a result. Seth Rollins pushed a cameraman into the melee, who Ambrose accidentally knocked down, leading to him getting arrested. Deservedly so, too, because his thought process appeared to be “hmm, it appears this unimposing camera man has inexplicably tried to join the Authority. This does not stand up to the slightest bit of analysis, but whatever, punch him in the head.” A menace! A complete and utter menace! In the end, though, a consensus was achieved that Ambrose had been stitched up, somehow he got out of jail (I think it was implied Roman Reigns was somehow involved, perhaps he did a salacious wink at a weak hearted guard) and returned to the arena in a police van, and with seconds remaining on the show, our heroes tore through the authority and Dean got the contract sorted. It was a mildly entertaining diversion I suppose, but a pretty daft one. It really doesn’t feel like WWE have got a handle on Dean Ambrose’s character yet. Sometimes his actions and insults are a six year old’s interpretation of a loveable lunatic. In contrast, Seth Rollins seems entirely comfortable in his role and his impassioned defence of Justin Bieber was absolutely pitch perfect for his character. The set-up behind this show long storyline was actually quite interesting and somewhat different, with the Authority hiding Ambrose’s contract behind a wall of goons, but the way it was executed, with the contrived arrest and the zany comeback, made it fall flat on its face. Another opportunity for Ambrose to become a bona fide main event talent has been wasted with this rivalry.

Someone Please Get Rusev and Lana a Relationship Counselor: Because I am sick and fucking tired of them screeching out their issues in the ring and using Dolph Ziggler as an unconvincing pawn. And it’s only been two weeks! There were some minor positives. It’s cool to see the Sheamus/Ziggler and Ziggler/Rusev issues intertwining somewhat, with Rusev helping the Celtic Warrior to victory in his match with Dolph and then slapping on the accolade afterwards. Rusev and Lana’s in ring argument also gave birth to the single greatest fan heckle in history, as the Bulgarian Brute demanded the Ravishing Russian say “three little words,” and someone in the crowd suggested they were “New Day sucks!” I also enjoyed Rusev pleading with Lana that if they stayed together, they could still “crush America;” the suggestion that their romantic life is intrinsically linked with their hatred of the U.S.A makes for a nice fragment of character depth. There’s potential in Rusev and Lana’s in ring arguments, even if all the bellowing does get on my nerves; the delivery is convincing from both, and their grip on their characters is strong. When Lana starts playing tonsil hockey with Ziggler the angle falls irrevocably to pieces though, it makes barely any sense and is just a wacky plot twist for the sake of a wacky plot twist.

THE Ridiculous:
NOTHING

The 411:
After a couple of weeks of above average episodes, this was an unwelcome return to mediocrity. There were some good spots, with the Cena-Ryder match in particular being very well executed. Unfortunately, the big Ambrose-Rollins saga didn’t quite work, and the only other thing on the show that aspired to actually do anything was the Rusev/Ziggler/Lana love triangle, which made for an even worse angle. It’s far from an unwatchable episode, but it was a disappointing way to head into what could actually be a pretty great Elimination Chamber special.

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

10: Virtually Perfect

The 993rd edition is over…

NAILED IT!