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

February 13, 2016 | Posted by Jack Stevenson
8.5
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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-THREE 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 2.08.16:
QUICK MATCH RESULTS:
* Dolph Ziggler d. Kevin Owens
* Charlotte d. Alicia Fox
* Bray Wyatt d. Ryback
* Adam Rose d. Titus O’Neil
* The League of Nations d. The Lucha Dragons
* Tamina d. Becky Lynch
* The Dudley Boyz & The Usos d. The New Day & Mark Henry in an Eight Man Tag Team Tables Match

THE Right:
Daniel Bryan says goodbye: This isn’t going to be a normal 4Rs column, because it wasn’t a normal Raw. Mostly, I’m just going to write about Daniel Bryan, and Dolph Ziggler vs. Kevin Owens for the millionth time and Ryback vs. Bray Wyatt for the billionth time will have to take a backseat. How could anyone want to talk about anything else other than Bryan’s departure? The immediate aftermath of an emotional retirement is not the best time to assess someone’s legacy, but I don’t think I’m being even remotely contentious in saying that Daniel Bryan was one of the greatest professional wrestlers in the history of the world. To say that about him is a statement of fact, equivalent to pointing out that he was born in Aberdeen, Washington and is married to Brie Bella. But Daniel Bryan was important for reasons that go beyond his impeccable, unparalleled in ring ability. I think it’s really significant that he’s so obviously just the nicest human being. To be a world-class professional wrestler, in the West at least, is to be saddled with demons and failings. Randy Savage lived in a state of perpetual paranoia. Shawn Michaels was, for most of his athletic peak, an obnoxious, entitled bully. Eddie Guerrero was haunted by drug addiction. Steve Austin beat his wife. Even Bret Hart is prone to bouts of egomania. That’s not to say that any of those people are inherently bad or irredeemable, and it takes nothing away from the fact that they were all astonishing professional wrestlers. But it taints the way you view certain aspects of their career, and makes justifying your adoration for them and for professional wrestling as a whole frustratingly complicated. There is none of that baggage with Daniel Bryan. In many respects, he was the poster boy for the new, better professional wrestler, the well rounded, thoughtful human being with perspective on life and a sense of humor that has never once compelled him to defecate in someone’s bag or their food or whatever. He’s just a normal guy who you can relate to. Obviously he is not the only main event level pro wrestler to be a really good person. John Cena seems a terrific human being, but he’s not normal. I can’t imagine being like John Cena, with his constant success and freakish, muscle bound body. To be honest, I wish I was like Daniel Bryan. He is a genuine role model and there is no better ambassador for professional wrestling in the 21st century than him.

His retirement speech was pitch perfect. Not that it really matters, of course, but it was. It was funny, it was sad, it was all so heartfelt. It gave you a real sense of precisely what he has achieved in his career, this humble, softly spoken, vaguely geeky fellow who just happened to be one of the most phenomenally gifted performers who ever graced the ring. Of course, pro wrestling is pathologically unfair, and there have been countless phenomenally gifted performers, many of them from Bryan’s generation, who have never received the large-scale adulation that he has. Maybe none of them were quite as phenomenally gifted as Bryan though, or as driven and passionate, or sympathetic and likeable. In his speech, Bryan mentioned having literally wrestled in the car parks of gas stations, an experience which must be fairly soul destroying. Nobody wants to spend more time in the car park of a gas station than is strictly necessary, let alone put yourself on display and your body on the line amidst its grimy, completely unglamorous surroundings. The dedication required to rise above those early humiliations is the sort of thing that makes Bryan so deserving. I tried doing stand up comedy a couple of years ago, and my first gig went really well. People laughed a lot at my jokes. I left that night on such a high, convinced that I had found what I wanted to do with my life. The next gig I did, I completely bombed, everyone sat there watching me in stony, bemused silence, wondering what the hell I was doing, and I got off the stage feeling awful and never stepped back on it again. Daniel Bryan got back in the ring again and again and again, overcoming setback after setback after setback, because even once he’d made it to WWE it wasn’t all sunshine and roses for him. He was fired the day after making his full debut on the main roster. His first ever WrestleMania match saw him lose in 12 seconds. His first WWE Championship reign lasted about five minutes. Even in the winter of 2013/2014, when his popularity was sky high, he was scheduled for a fairly meaningless midcard match at WrestleMania 30 against Sheamus. We all know what happened from there. His whole career, he has been just irrepressible.

It’s obviously terrible that he’s had to retire in the prime of his career, frustrating that he never got more than one than one genuine run with the WWE Championship, a run that was curtailed by injury before it ever got going. However, there is something quite fitting about Bryan bowing out now. It means he will be remembered as he genuinely was; an staggering pro wrestler, a genuine underdog. No Ric Flair style years of legacy shredding- a perfectly formed career. It’s hard to express properly what he meant and I doubt I’ve done an outstanding job of doing so in this 1000 word ramble. I’m glad I got to watch him wrestle live, once. It was at Pro Wrestling NOAH’s European Navigation 2008, he teamed with Eddie Edwards against KENTA and Taiji Ishimori, and it was a super match. I’m going to miss him a lot, and I hope he doesn’t fade into the background, I hope he pops up on TV semi regularly and continues to advocate for professional wrestling and be enthusiastic about it. I hope he and Brie have magnificent, handsome children, and that in thirty years time at least one of them is one of the best professional wrestlers in the world. I hope Daniel Bryan will never be forgotten.

Ambrose and Lesnar go to war: Somewhat overshadowed by the raw emotion surrounding Daniel Bryan’s retirement, the Roman Reigns/Dean Ambrose/Brock Lesnar feud got really, really good this week, so much so that I’m starting to wish that match was headlining WrestleMania, rather than the more pedestrian Reigns vs. Triple H battle. I overlooked the really good promo Dean Ambrose cut last week, and I won’t make the same mistake this time out- he was terrific in his confrontation with Brock Lesnar, and looked like the sort of person he should have been ever since he became a fan favourite. For a year and a bit now he’s been WWE’s oh so zany interpretation of a lunatic, whereas this week he seemed mad and unhinged but also a complete bad ass. He stood up to Roman Reigns and insisted on taking on Brock Lesnar solo, needled the Beast into meeting him in the ring with some genuinely cutting insults, and then had a fantastic brawl with him which went exactly the way you’d want it to. Lesnar was dominant and beat the hell out of him, but Dean showed remarkable courage and guts to keep getting back up and asking for more, and then, after a distraction from Reigns, floored Brock with a low blow. It was such an energetic and exciting segment. It’s a real shame that the actual match they’re building to is so predictable, because it’s almost a waste of what is swiftly becoming a great build. Still, if they can keep this level of aggression and purpose up for another two weeks, we’ll at least get some excellent television out of it.

puRgatoRy:
The Dudley Boyz & The Usos vs. The New Day & Mark Henry: This wasn’t up to much as a match, but I still think it’s worth mentioning for two reasons. The first is that WWE were willing to completely ignore continuity and established face/heel divisions in order to have Mark Henry agree to team with the New Day, apparently just because they thought it would be funny to see him dancing while wearing a unicorn horn. And they were right! It was a great call. Henry put that horn on, gyrated his hips like it was 1999, and even got to play Francesca a bit. It’s nice to see what a good sport Henry is. The second noteworthy thing about this is of course the Dudleyz post match heel turn on the Usos, which was rather out of the blue but seems a good idea on the whole. If I want to see Bubba and D-Von do anything in 2016, it’s be bullying, nasty, miserable old men, and this moves them a decisive step in that direction. Neither of those developments were so knock-out fantastic as to lift a pretty rushed and lifeless Tables match into the ‘right,’ but they made it more noteworthy than your average Raw midcard match.

Two Talk Shows for the Price of One: Oh, Chris Jericho. It was going so well. Having been consistently cringe worthy since his return to WWE, Jericho recaptured a glimmer of his old self in his confrontation with the Miz this week. He was still quite visibly an ageing man in a midlife crisis, but stuff like imposing his Highlight Reel set over the top of MizTV halfway through the show was at least the sort of thing you could imagine the brash, cool, young Y2J of 15 years ago doing. And then he decided to awkwardly segue into a rendition of ‘All I Want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth’ to mock Miz for getting kicked in the mouth by AJ Styles on Smackdown. It wasn’t just the outdated, silly pop culture reference that he chose, but the way he strained to make sure we all understood it, to the extent that he introduced it by saying “this reminds me of that song by the Chipmunks…” I think maybe Jericho should not be allowed to talk in 2016 and should just wrestle AJ Styles instead. Together, they still make for an exciting novelty pairing, and this segment improved once it stopped being Jericho and Miz exchanging tepid banter, and focused instead on the developing rivalry between Y2J and AJ. Miz did really well to ratchet the tension up between the two, and it made Styles’ eventual appearance, his brawl with Miz and skirmish and staredown with Jericho, that bit more exciting. It was a decent segment on the whole.

THE wRong:
The Matches that Drew ‘Seahawks’ Chants: It’s a bit concerning for Charlotte that despite being the face of an ostensibly separate but equal division, her matches can still be dissed in such a way. Whether or not you like Roman Reigns, people at least turn on his matches from time to time because they’re experiencing an emotional reaction towards him, which they wouldn’t if he were just an irrelevant midcarder. For Charlotte, and indeed for The Social Outcasts, they’re getting that chant out of apathy. The fact it happened twice in one night shows just how ropey this injury ravaged midcard is at the moment.

THE Ridiculous:
NOTHING

The 1068th edition is over…

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8.5
The final score: review Very Good
The 411
It seems strange to give this Raw such a strong rating based largely on the enforced retirement of one of the all time great pro wrestlers, but Bryan saying farewell to an adoring WWE Universe is going to stay with me for quite some time. Plus, the Reigns/Ambrose/Lesnar saga killed it this week, and with the welcome heel turn of the Dudleyz as well there was tons of newsworthy stuff coming out of this show. It's definitely the most memorable Raw in months and months and months.
legend

article topics :

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