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 8.17.15:
QUICK MATCH RESULTS:
* Randy Orton & Cesaro defeated Sheamus & Kevin Owens
* Roman Reigns defeated Luke Harper
* Becky Lynch defeated Tamina
* Rusev defeated Mark Henry
* Ryback defeated The Miz
* The Prime Time Players & The Lucha Dragons defeated The New Day & Los Matadores
* Sasha Banks defeated Nikki Bella

THE Right:
Roman Reigns vs. Luke Harper: Is Dean Ambrose turning heel at Summerslam, then? There’s been some simmering speculation to that effect, and in flashes the so called Lunatic Fringe appeared believably, alarmingly erratic this week, rather than being afflicted by the zany, friendly kind of madness that lends itself nicely to the kind of offbeat japes he’s indulged in since the Shield broke up. There’s definitely an appeal to an edgier, more unpleasant Ambrose on a week to week basis, although having both of his’ best friends turn on him is the kind of heavy handed, pawing needily at your emotions booking that Roman Reigns could do without, considering that his post WrestleMania rehabilitation has so far gone pretty excellently. Plus, they’re just so sweet together, Ambrose and Reigns. You can tell that they really are good pals. Anyway, Reigns has been a very consistent performer since his trip to Suplex City, and his bout with Luke Harper this week was comfortably the best on the show, although of course it helps that Harper is superb. They threw some properly nasty strikes at each other and the finishing stretch had plenty of oomph about it. Summerslam has a stacked card that is enticing because its unique and is littered with big names in them, but it sorely lacks matches that promise to be in ring classics; Reigns/Ambrose vs. Wyatt/Harper is going to have to carry that end of the show alongside Cesaro vs. Owens, and on this evidence we’ve got a good chance of seeing some fine tag team wrestling on Sunday.

puRgatoRy:
Inglorious Undertaker: Here’s what I will say for this segment- I would never have thought that anything realistically could make a modern WWE crowd boo The Undertaker. He’s so universally respected and his legacy is so rich and he’s such an integral part of so many people’s childhoods, I’d assumed that he was essentially bulletproof. He could have decided to spend the twilight years of his career derailing every single PPV main event by rendering all the competitors unconscious with tortuously slow nerve pinches while simultaneously portraying a new version of his iconic Deadman character that is similar to Naked Mideon in all the worst ways, and I’d have expected the whole WWE universe to grin and bear it, insisting through gritted teeth that this was really good stuff. But, lo and behold, The Undertaker interrupted a typically off the wall and brilliant Paul Heyman promo to punt Lesnar down low, thrash him to the ground with the Chokeslam, and send him to his grave with a Tombstone, and the partisan Minnesota crowd were most displeased. That Heyman promo drags this week’s developments in the Taker/Lesnar feud into purgatory for this week, because the actual beatdown delivered by the Phenom to the Beast was disappointingly tepid. It boasted none of the fire and chaos of their brawl across the arena from a few weeks ago, with Lesnar not evening beginning to fight back, allowing his nemesis to steamroller him in his own hometown. It left me waiting for the twist, for Lesnar to rise up out of nowhere and bring some violence of his own, but nothing ever came and Raw just spluttered to a conclusion. Perhaps they guessed that the Minnesota crowd would be so rabid for their boy Brock Lesnar that they could draw a loud reaction from them with the minimum effort, I don’t know. I certainly don’t think this will have been particularly successful at getting everyone appropriately amped for Taker vs. Lesnar, but the sheer bravado of Heyman’s promo, the outrageousness of him getting down on his knees in the middle of the ring and performing a bellowed, out of tune rendition of ‘Glory Hallelujah’ that pays tribute to the all conquering power of Brock Lesnar… that was something that shouldn’t be forgotten in a hurry.

Kings of the Cosmos: It was barely even a thing, but I really liked the Stardust/King Barrett promo live from the darkest corner of the galaxy. It was probably the best part of Raw. Barrett’s new Cosmic King armour is a tremendously goofy touch, and the beleaguered monarch seems to enjoy getting to let his hair down a bit in this charming celebrity angle. Stardust cut a motivated, entertaining promo, he’s really been rejuvenated by this conflict with Arrow. I really really hope the tag match on Sunday is genuinely good, and not just by celebrity standards.

THE wRong:
John Cena and Seth Rollins sign some paper: “IN RING CONTRACT SIGNING” is the least exciting phrase in the wrestling lexicon. You know how it will go before it has even began- everyone involved in it will argue with each other, and about 85% of the time that will lead to a big brawl in which a table is upturned. On the other 15% of occasions, someone will storm off in a rage without doing any punching, and the segment will peter out from there. To pull off a genuinely entertaining contract signing in 2015, you have to be a truly terrific performer, and if he really wanted to, John Cena could have managed it. But he didn’t. Instead, he cut a vaguely embarrassing promo which just humiliated Seth Rollins, made the WWE Champion looked like an irredeemably pathetic, unworthy dweeb, and underlined that what should ostensibly be the most prestigious bout on any WWE card is actually less enticing than a good four or five others on the Summerslam card. Cena is hardly at fault for the bafflingly counter-productive way Rollins has been portrayed throughout his title reign, during which he has been undermined week in and week out by everybody he comes into contact with, and his sizeable victories in pay-per-view main events are brushed under the carpet. Yet the 15 time World Champion had the capability to gloss over all of these flaws and make Rollins seem a credible opponent for him at Summerslam; if you’re an elite level wrestler like Cena is, that’s the sort of thing you can do in a couple of weeks. Instead, he’s treated him as a coward and a joke throughout, and he rammed that message home on Raw, treating it as almost a foregone conclusion that the title would change hands come Sunday, and claiming that it would be a blessed relief for the legacy of the belt itself when that happens. I honestly can’t remember quite what Rollins said in response, so drowned out was he by the venom and bile in Cena’s words. What I took away from this segment is that if Seth Rollins does retain his WWE Championship at Summerslam, he will lose it at Night of Champions, Hell in a Cell at a push. It seems an inevitability that Cena will win it back at some point in the very near future, and a sense of inevitability is rarely a good thing to feel when you’re watching professional wrestling. I really didn’t like this at all.

The Show Off Returns: I quite liked Mark Henry vs. Rusev for what it was. It had noticeably more thought put into it than their previous encounters, and you got the sense that they might be capable of having a really great match together if they were to receive a proper chance. Henry briefly powering out of the Accolade only to succumb to it at the second time of asking was a neat, tiny little twist that gave the impression that both guys had a little bit of ambition for this episode in what was close to feeling like an interminable series. Unfortunately, the match wasn’t good enough to distract from the post match events. Dolph Ziggler is back and it appears that Rusev jamming a crutch into his throat all those weeks ago has not hindered his ability to use his voice at all, which is most disappointing. I mean, it’s not like he cut a promo or anything, but I think the announcers would have mentioned it if he was a mute now. It’s a shame to say it, considering what a phenomenally talented athlete Ziggler is, but the Rusev/Lana soap opera improved exponentially once he was removed from the equation, and if it continues past Summerslam it will probably regress terribly now he’s back. Small progress in the Mark Henry-Rusev matches, large regress in the extra-curricular romance drama. One step forward, three steps back. Also, any moment where a male wrestler implies that he might attack a female wrestler, as happened this week when Rusev loomed menacingly over Lana, doesn’t work on any level in 2015. It’s never going to happen so there’s no real tension, and if it did it would be hideous and unjustifiable. Ziggler-Rusev will be OK at Summerslam, but I’d be more excited to see Rusev and Henry get ten minutes, or for the Bulgarian Brute to just do a backstage interview in which he gets to show off his wicked sense of humor.

The Divas Counter-Revolution: The first major bump in the road for The Stephanie McMahon Spring (taking place in the Summer!) Sasha Banks and Nikki Bella threw together a watchable de-facto main event for Raw, but it wasn’t enough for sections of the Target Centre, who chose instead to cheer for Brock Lesnar and, more egregiously, JBL. The likes of Mick Foley have been crying out with fake outrage about this apparent show of disrespect, but this week’s dissent to the mandatory fun that is the ‘Divas Revolution’ is entirely understandable, considering that whoever is currently responsible for booking the Divas’ Division apparently felt that the so-so brawl from a few weeks ago that kicked off the whole thing was so wildly compelling that they didn’t need to book any kind of follow up, leaving the whole division to subsist off the dubious strength of that angle alone. Whoever is currently responsible for booking the Divas’ Division is not very good at booking professional wrestling. If they had overseen the N.W.O, Stephanie McMahon would have been primarily responsible for coaxing Hulk Hogan to the Black and White, and he would have lost three times in the ensuing four weeks to Sting, Lex Luger, and Randy Savage, and he would have been representing a stable called H.N.H, for Hogan, Nash and Hall. This would have grown problematic when the group reached its most bloated excesses, as they would have to have been renamed H.N.H.S.V.B.B.N.S.M.K.H.R.A.D.S, and that would have been unwieldy. There have been some decent matches from some talented women in recent weeks, and fans have responded warmly to them because it’s refreshing to see the division get taken seriously for a change, and because everyone naturally believed that a follow up to the creation of these three new Divas’ teams was just around the corner. Instead, the teams have traded wins and losses, nobody has gained any kind of advantage, no one’s character has developed, and it’s no surprise that some people, even if at the moment it’s the drunken nuisance bros of the WWE universe, are losing their patience. The Summerslam elimination match will probably have too much going on to be particularly good, so some actual development should occur on the following night’s Raw to kick things forward again.

THE Ridiculous:
NOTHING

The 411:
After a string of good quality Raws, this final one before Summerslam felt too much like a hype show, and in places not an especially effective one. The returns of the Undertaker and Dolph Ziggler both fell flat, and on the whole I don’t feel any more excited for the big event than I did last week. Happily, I was feeling pretty excited for it last week anyway, and one way or another it’s going to be a memorable show on Sunday, brimming with matches that you genuinely won’t have a chance of seeing at any other show this year. WWE have done a great job of putting together a worthy card for Summerslam. I wish they’d been better at showing off about it this week.

Show Rating: 5.0

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 1017th edition is over…

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