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 8.10.15:
QUICK MATCH RESULTS:
* The Bella Twins & Alicia Fox d. Team B.A.D
* The New Day d. Los Matadores
* Randy Orton d. Cesaro & Kevin Owens in a Triple Threat Match to earn a WWE Championship match later in the evening
* Luke Harper d. Dean Ambrose
* Mark Henry vs. Rusev went to a no contest
* Neville d. King Barrett
* Randy Orton d. Seth Rollins via disqualification

THE Right:
Team B.A.D vs. The Bella Twins & Alicia Fox: I was listening to the Talk is Jericho episode with The New Day, and there was a segment in it where they ran down some of the awful names that were suggested for them as a trio before ‘The New Day’ was settled on. Alongside such gems as ‘A Fresh Coat of Paint’ was ‘K.B.X,’ representing Kofi, Big. E and Xavier. Months on, and having had ‘The Submission Sorority’ torn from them by the cruel pornography gods, Paige, Charlotte and Becky Lynch are now, erm… ‘P.C.B.’ At least K.B.X sounds like a potentially intriguing extreme sports league. P.C.B sounds like a chemical the government would ban you from spraying on your crops. Anyway, the unfortunately named trio watched on from the commentary table as Team Bella met Team B.A.D- it’s a revolution for the Divas, and a renaissance for cringy acronyms. The match itself was good, although the booking continues to be alarmingly bland, with teams just trading victories in the build up to an elimination match at Summerslam in which one team will obtain a slightly bigger victory. In spite of this, everyone involved in this storyline seems to be getting over to various degrees. It’s funny what being taken seriously can do for your career. Sasha Banks was already held in high esteem by a fair proportion of the WWE Universe of course, even before she debuted on Raw, but the crowd were electric for her at times during this. They also really dug Brie’s ‘Daniel Bryan kicks,’ although they were always going to, and the finishing stretch was a total frenzy. The flaws with this storyline continue to be glaring, but the Divas’ are overcoming them remarkably well.

The New Day vs. Los Matadores: The match itself was merely OK, but Big. E’s gyrating victory dance encapsulates everything that is marvelous about the New Day. They’ve got a sparkling sense of humor, they don’t take themselves too seriously, and they genuinely adore being the worst, most obnoxious people.

Randy Orton vs. Cesaro vs. Kevin Owens: This was a great match. In spite of Cesaro’s poor win/loss record on Raw in recent weeks, the excellent matches he’s been having and high calibre of opponents he’s been facing has made him seem a bigger star than at any point in his WWE career so far, even including the immediate aftermath of his Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal win. If two or three main events were struck down with injury, it feels like Cesaro could be cycled into a title shot on any kind of non WrestleMania pay-per-view without raising any eyebrows. Having said that, it was still infuriating when he got pinned clean as a whistle by Randy Orton. I like Randy Orton a good deal, but he was comfortably the least interesting of the three potential opponents for Rollins in the main event. Considering that he ended up winning that match via DQ, it’s even more disappointing that the chance wasn’t given to Cesaro or Owens, who would have genuinely benefited from even the victory via technicality that Sheamus’ interference would have given them. Orton has already won twelve world championships. He doesn’t need a moral thirteenth. The finish to the match was fabulous, as Owens attempted to hit the Pop-Up Powerbomb on Cesaro, only for the Swiss Superman to land on his feet. Orton then slithered into the ring and RKOed KO, then Cesaro, and picked up the three count. It doesn’t sound so impressive, but in practice it was a super slick, unpredictable ending to what was a high quality Triple Threat, packed with great near falls.

The Undertaker vs. Brock Lesnar: The Music Video: That is a misleading title. There was a video and it had some music in it but it was more of a dramatic video package to hype their match at Summerslam. It is some indication as to how good that this video package was that I’ve decided it’s worth mentioning in the column. When WWE decided to take a match really, really seriously, they can be really great at persuading everyone else to take it really, really seriously as well. For this hype video, a plethora of mega stars from Steve Austin to Seth Rollins were drafted in to offer their predictions for how the Summerslam match will go, interspersed with clips of Taker and Lesnar being very angry with each other indeed. It was a superb effort on the part of production team, and WWE as a whole are doing a great job of making this match seem much greater than the sum of its parts.

Dean Ambrose vs. Luke Harper: This was a likeable match, although it underlined what a weird position Dean Ambrose is right about now. A month and a bit ago he was headlining pay-per-views, and he’s still one of the more notable fan favourites on the roster, but all of a sudden he’s losing clean to Luke Harper, who hasn’t done anything particularly noteworthy in 2015, and his ring work and promos have hit a noticeable lull. This was his best match since the main events with Rollins, with plenty of smooth sequences and interference from Reigns and Harper incorporated well.

MizTV w/ Daniel Bryan and some interlopers: Considering this was Daniel Bryan’s first Raw appearance in months, in front of what is essentially his home town crowd no less, it was strange to see him fade into the background somewhat in this segment. The Ryback/Show/Miz feud isn’t especially great and Bryan is probably the nicest human and best performer in professional wrestling since Eddie Guerrero, so it probably would have made for better television if the crowd had all chanted “YES! YES! YES!” for ten minutes straight while he flashed that faintly bemused grin he has on his face whenever people remind him en masse how brilliant he is at the professional wrestling. Still, it was great to see him, and in all fairness his presence was neatly woven into the wider Intercontinental Championship saga, as Miz put him on the spot and asked whether the injured Ryback should follow his example and surrender his title to, oh I don’t know, that Mike Mizanin fellow. The Big Show came out to note that he wasn’t a fan of that idea, and then none other than Ryback made a timely return to say that he wasn’t either. Bryan threw Miz to the proverbial wolves, and everyone went home happy, except for the Miz who presumably went home very unhappy indeed. You can’t please everyone. On the whole, this was a little bit paint by numbers as a segment, but to be honest that was all it needed to be. It seamlessly reset the Triple Threat match for Summerslam and provided a welcome Daniel Bryan sighting.

Various Superheroes Fight It Out: Stephen Amell has flown underneath my cultural radar, but judging by his performance on Raw WWE have achieved quite the coup by persuading him to appear, he seemed enthusiastic to be participating in the show and looked like a competently trained professional wrestler when brawling with Stardust. The crowd treated him well, and his presence in the tag team match at Summerslam might just hand Stardust and Barrett the biggest reactions they’ll get all year. It’s telling of the unlucky downswing that Barrett is on that the reason he is getting to compete in this reasonably high profile match is that he lost in one minute to Neville and then just happened to loiter on the outside of the ring while Arrow attacked Stardust. You take what you can get though, and he’ll play a part in what looks like a good fun match at Summerslam.

puRgatoRy:
Summer Rae Crush: Mark Henry and Rusev wrestled for the umpteenth time, but the bout was swiftly derailed by Lana and Summer Rae brawling all over the place, which didn’t end well for the Ravishing Russian. Summer clamped the Accolade on her, and Rusev celebrated by unveiling a Bulgarian flag with his face plastered across it, which was pretty funny. A short, fairly unremarkable segment, but it kept the ball rolling towards Summerslam in efficient fashion. Dolph Ziggler is not really missed at all in these angles.

THE wRong:
Randy Orton vs. Seth Rollins: Orton and Rollins went through the motions and scraped together a watchable main event. Unfortunately, it was all leading up to a lame finish, as Sheamus interfered and cost Randy a WWE Championship he seem certain to have won after plucking Seth from the sky with an RKO. The Celtic Warrior then steamrollered the champion with a Brogue Kick and seemed on the brink of cashing in his title shot, but at this point the angle completely fell apart, as Sheamus took an absolute age to hand the briefcase to the referee and it became blatantly apparent that he was stalling for time until someone could revive themselves and prevent him from seizing the initiative. Eventually, Orton recovered enough to flatten him with another RKO, and Raw ended in a frustrating stalemate, with nothing really to show for the 10-15 minute match we’d just witnessed. It did at least set the table for the Rollins/Orton/Sheamus Triple Threat that is rumored to be the back-up WWE Championship match at Summerslam in case John Cena can’t make it, but at the moment it very much looks like he will, and this means we will get another Orton-Sheamus singles match surely! Booooo! Cena sucks!

THE Ridiculous:
NOTHING

The 411:
The rather good build to Summerslam continued with another rather good Raw in a string of rather good Raws. There were a lot of high quality matches and angles, none of them so high quality to make this an all time classic episode, but there was enough there to make it a highly enjoyable one. The Summerslam card looks absolutely stacked, there are no obvious five star epics but there’s breadth and diversity from bottom to top, and we should get plenty of memorable moments out of it. So far, this has been a pretty hot summer in the WWE universe.

Show Rating: 7.7

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 1015th edition is over…

New Day Rocks