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 6.15.15:
QUICK MATCH RESULTS:
* Dean Ambrose d. Sheamus
* R-Truth d. King Barrett
* Kevin Owens d. Dolph Ziggler
* Kane d. Randy Orton
* The Miz d. The Big Show
* The Bella Twins d. Paige in a Handicap Match
* Neville & The Prime Time Players d. The New Day

THE Right:
Seth Rollins is very smug: How did Raw begin this week? (Well, it started with a heart wrenching Dusty Rhodes tribute, but how did the regularly scheduled programming begin?) With a wrestling match? With a baffling dramatic reconstruction of the Hindenburg disaster, using the fondly remembered Stridex blimp of the mid nineties as a prop? With someone doing plot exposition through the medium of an in ring promo? It was the latter, if you couldn’t guess. Happily, it was a really really good promo this week from still reigning and defending WWE Champion Seth Rollins. He was practically drunk on glee and ego having successfully retained his title at Money in the Bank despite having been doubted by seemingly everyone, and this led to a brilliant mock acceptance speech in which he wished to thank all the people who had been so instrumental in his success, including Seth Rollins, Seth Rollins, Seth Rollins, Seth Rollins and, who could forget, Seth Rollins. I think this is the best single promo Rollins has ever cut in WWE, it was note perfect, right down to the way he congratulated Dean Ambrose on putting forth an incredible effort in their match, but only to highlight just how bloody magnificent Rollins must be in order to beat such a tough competitor. Essentially, Rollins genuinely wants everyone to like him, but nobody does because he also genuinely believes that he has the inherent right to be appreciated by everyone. He can barely even consider the idea that sometimes he isn’t charming or hilarious or whatever. After a promo as superb as this, I may well name my child ‘Seth’ as Rollins suggested. I have no child. This isn’t relevant really. Anyway, it was a quality start to the show, and I also liked the way the promo segued smoothly into Dean Ambrose doing an in ring sit-in, which then flowed into the Ambrose-Sheamus match. It made the Raw opening feel less formulaic and more spontaneous, which is essentially everything I want from, well, all of Raw.

Something Good is Going to Happen with J&J Security, I Just Know It: Here is a fact: the Seth Rollins/J&J break-up is infinitely more watchable than the Rusev/Lana one and it will continue to be this way until Joey Mercury starts shooting gooey love looks at Dolph Ziggler. This week they confronted each other backstage, with the main bone of contention predictably being Noble and Mercury’s upset win over Rollins last week. Jamie’s insistence that this meant Joey Mercury should be in line for a title shot was a great line, as was Mercury taunting Seth with the knowledge that the record books would always show a defeat for the WWE Champion at the hands of his own security team. I don’t think Noble and Mercury were ever the best casting choice for a pair of incompetent goons for everyone to laugh at, because they weren’t as successful as their forefathers Pat Patterson and Gerald Brisco and so to see them stumbling around being a couple of dweebs was a bit sad. But now they’re standing up for themselves and making their own jokes, everything’s going great, and I think they might actually have carved out a regular roster spot, at least for a little while. That would be a really nice development if so for two genuine talents who never received the swansong their careers deserved. In unrelated backstage segment news that I couldn’t fit anywhere else, I felt really bad for Kane during his little conversation with Dean Ambrose near the end of the show. He just wanted to bond over their mutual desire to throw darts at Seth Rollins, but instead Ambrose went on about what a coward and corporate suit he is. Which is true, I suppose, but still, the guy’s literally been through hell. Let the poor man have his office job.

The Antics of Kevin Owens: If you are an upstart young bad guy, it is usually a very bad sign to lose on PPV to John Cena. Just ask Bray Wyatt or Rusev. Kevin Owens, however seems to have taken the defeat in his stride, and in fact perhaps had his best episode of Raw ever this week. His tirade against Cena was probably the best promo he’s cut on the main roster so far, with his insistence that Cena only has himself to blame for getting powerbombed against the ring apron because he had the temerity, the sheer gall, to… offer a compliment! Owens is completely fulfilling that old cliché that heels should be believable but not agreeable; you can understand why Owens was so furious that Cena would condescend to let him know he belongs in a WWE ring, but at the same time… he was just being nice, and genuine. Anyway, after his compelling rant he had a great match with Dolph Ziggler, tossing the best rag doll in wrestling all around the ring. Before the match, Owens had implied the NXT Championship would be on the line, but at the last minute informed “blondie” (Lillian Garcia) that in fact this wasn’t the case, which was a superbly petty piece of reneging. Your normal despicable wrestler would consider this a good night’s work, but not Kev. See, later in the night, the Coldplay of rap music Machine Gun Kelly was doing a little concert that no one asked for, and Owens just sauntered over and powerbombed him off the stage! What japes! It’s easy to take stabs at Kelly, but this wasn’t just a great moment because it was a vaguely annoying celebrity taking the beating- it was a genuinely startling moment, the sort that makes you rub your eyes and do a double take. “Did that popular recording artist just sail off the gosh darn stage?” In 1997, the best year of Raw ever, stuff like this happened all the time. “Is that ECW on Raw? Is Steve Austin beating the heck out of Bret Hart in an ambulance? Did Dude Love just become a tag team champion?” Kevin Owens would thrive in 1997.

Brock’s Back!: Hooray! Brock Lesnar is the single most remarkable performer in the recent history of professional wrestling. He’s not just a guy, he’s an event. There’s no one else who wrestles like him, who chews up the biggest stars in pro wrestling and spits them out and does so in such a thrilling, raging, completely magnetic way. I would watch Brock Lesnar deliver 18 suplexes to a phonebook. With Paul Heyman by his side, he is everything you look for in a professional performer, and he’s back, back with a vengeance to rip the WWE Championship from the dead, bludgeoned fists of Seth Rollins. His actual arrival was somewhat anti climactic. It was meant to be a shocking return but too many people knew what was happening for there to be a true element of surprise. Once he’d hit the ring, he just stared at Seth Rollins until the beleaguered champion cowered away to the back, which worked well enough as a way of saying “hello I am Brock Lesnar you are not going to like me,” especially with the super cool little detail of Seth being completely unable to meet the eye of this horrifying monster. But the segment really needed the exclamation point of someone being F5ed, it felt anti-climactic for Brock ‘fucking’ Lesnar to come back after three months away, a three month enforced absence for beating the shit out of innocent commentators and cameramen in a blind rage which Seth Rollins triggered, and then just announce his return by standing looking tough. Still, we get the point- Lesnar’s back, he’s going to fight Rollins at Battleground, it’s going to be outstanding.

puRgatoRy:
R-Truth vs. King Barrett: I am so disproportionately furious at the turn Wade Barrett’s career has taken in 2015. There are a lot of things WWE are doing terribly in 2015 that are a lot more important to putting on a consistently enjoyable wrestling show than “making Wade Barrett not seem the dweebiest of geeks” and yet every week the sheer idiocy of the way he’s been booked screams at me like a talking, anguished thumb which will definitely be sore in the morning. Wade Barrett has everything. He’s handsome, charismatic, rugged, not at all bad in the ring, and the general consensus is that this man should be a World Champion by now. Indeed, last year dirt sheets were reporting that Vince McMahon saw Barrett as one of the stars of the future, someone who should be surfing the crest of the new wave alongside (well, slightly in the shadow of) Roman Reigns. With all in the mind… what the heck is going on with him? Why has he been stripped of every single thing that everyone ever liked him about him ever? Why does he lose every week? Why did he lose in a pathetic 18 seconds to R-Truth?! R-Truth is a joke. A funny joke, but a joke nonetheless, and by losing to him so limply, King Barrett has become an embarrassing joke. It’s just so daft. Gah. Anyway, you may have noticed that despite my fury, this has still made it into the ‘purgatory’ segment, and that’s because this match was introduced with another bit of hilarious fourth wall chipping from R-Truth, who came out to do guest commentary on Barrett’s match only to realize that in fact, he was the opponent. I don’t understand how the creative team have enough self awareness to have R-Truth automatically assume he’s competing in multi man matches and doing guest commentary, because that is literally all he ever does, and yet lack the self awareness to actually improve the quality of Raw. Admittedly these complaints are a little inappropriate this week because Raw was really good this week I felt, but still. Anyway, long story short, R-Truth is really funny and even though King Barrett is being wasted, his segment this week was over too quickly to get properly angry about it.

Divas Things: This week’s episode of the bleak, incoherent soap opera that is WWE’s Divas Division was… OK, by Divas standards. Paige arranged a meeting with most of the female roster to rail against the corruption of the Bellas, but it was gatecrashed by the evil twins and they scared everyone off by name-dropping Stephanie McMahon. Later in the night, Nikki and Brie saw Paige off in a handicap match, which had a couple of nice near falls and did a decent job of giving the fan favorite a fighting chance. I give it all a pass.

Bray’s a little crackpot: I was so displeased when I heard Roman Reigns had lost the Money in the Bank briefcase to Sheamus via interference from Bray Wyatt. Every word of that sentence after ‘had’ brought new waves of disappointment. Roman Reigns is at the moment fairly likeable, and if they still want him to be their next big main event fan favorite WWE have to capitalize. They can’t go down the Ring of Honor route of delaying and delaying the big babyface title victory until it’s met with muted cheers but mostly shrugs of indifference, and yet that’s exactly what they seemed to be doing when Reigns was denied the Money in the Bank briefcase by Bray Wyatt of all people. Wyatt has been stalling for time for over a year now with meaningless feud after meaningless feud, and it seemed inevitable that a skirmish with Roman Reigns would be just another entrant in that unwelcome series. However, when it came to Raw, it turned out Wyatt has a proper “oh fuck!” moment planned out- from his secretive Titantron lair, he produced a photo of Roman Reigns’ child from that cute Youtube video they did together, and sang the “I’m a Little Teapot” rhyme. Deep down, I know this is meaningless. I know that Bray’s not going to teleport over to Reigns’ house and start the cult up again with his daughter as first recruit, or drop her stone cold with Sister Abigail, or anything like that. But I want to believe in Bray Wyatt. Everyone does. He was so good for a spell, and seemed to promise so much more. He seemed to just have this epic, dark, gripping storyline waiting for him somewhere when he was ready, and it’s never materialized. Maybe this is Bray’s time- it probably isn’t, but until it’s been conclusively proved otherwise, I’m putting these segments in a hopeful state of purgatory.

The Big Show vs. The Miz: Whisper it quietly, but the Ryback/Miz/Big Show three man feud might not be as bad as I just assumed it would be last time out. You can’t blame me for dismissing this burgeoning rivalry out of hand. Ryback, The Miz and The Big Show are not an inspiring trio. A confrontation between some balsa wood, a sock, and some glue has more instant appeal. Yet at the moments, this little midcard quarrel is working, and this is down to the Miz being the most conniving, sneaky villain on the WWE roster. Unwilling to actually engage with his match against the Big Show, he decided to just try and stay as far away from his opponent until an opportunity presented itself to him. The plan worked, although not quite in the way he would have liked- Show caught The Miz and threw him into guest commentator Ryback, which triggered a brawl between the two big men that rumbled on until Show was counted out. Still, a win is a win, and Miz deserves it for his smarts. Ryback was pretty funny on commentary as well, reacting to having the Most Must See Superstar thrown into him by exasperatedly proclaiming that he’d “got Miz all over him,” as if he’d spilled mustard or something. I am too wary about a feud featuring all these three being actually good to put this segment in the right, I suspect it’s a trap. But, tentatively, this was fun, properly fun.

Neville & The Prime Time Players vs. The New Day: This was a nice little six man tag team match, albeit nothing particularly memorable with no electrifying near falls or razor sharp character work or captivating storyline advancement. It was mostly notable for how smooth Darren Young looked. I never noticed before, but the guy is rather silky in the ring.

THE wRong:
Sheamus and Randy Orton don’t like each other: Their rivalry is quintessential Raw 2015. So far they have traded DQ victories and then cost each other singles matches by causing distractions. They are feuding because they are both ostensibly important guys who, in spite of this, have nothing better to do than not get along. They will have a proper PPV singles match at some point, and it will no better or worse than the other middling PPV singles matches they have had with each other in the past. It’s a shame, because both guys have been in decent form this year and in a better creative landscape would find plenty of opportunities, but instead its Sheamus and Randy Orton, just because. Bah.

THE Ridiculous:
NOTHING

The 411:
Not sure what the consensus is on this week’s Raw, but I liked it a lot. It had some properly memorable moments with Kevin Owens assaulting Machine Gun Kelly and Brock Lesnar returning, plus there was that great Seth Rollins promo, and real glimmers of promise in the midcard. It’s not unmissable or anything (even the powerbomb off the stage clearly sent Kelly into a soft, foamy landing) but I found the show consistently entertaining.

Show Rating: 7.5

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 999th edition is over…

Cole and JBL… big fans.