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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Raw 5.09.16:
QUICK MATCH RESULTS:
– Baron Corbin defeated Dolph Ziggler @ 8:36 via pin
– R-Truth defeated Fandango @ 1:55 via pin
– Non-Title Match: Paige defeated Champion Charlotte @ 7:48 via pin
– Non-Title Match: Sami Zayn defeated Champion The Miz @ 12:50 via pin
– Sin Cara defeated Sin Cara @ 3:48 via pin
– Elimination Tag Match: Roman Reigns and The Usos defeated AJ Styles, Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson @ 11:40 via DQ
– Kevin Owens defeated Zack Ryder @ 4:05 via pin
– The Dudley Boyz defeated Champions New Day @ 5:07 via pin

THE Right:
The Highlight Reel w/ Big Cass: I was pleasantly surprised by this segment. Chris Jericho began Raw by belittling Dean Ambrose and his late lamented potted plant Mitch, which is an odd sentence to type. It was a good promo that mixed the humorous antics surrounding the Assassination of Mitch the Plant by the Coward Chris Jericho with some more serious angle advancement, as Jericho branded Ambrose a mere everyman, whereas Y2J is a legend (at least in his own mind). Big Cass then interrupted and, happily, more than held his own in a dueling promo with Jericho. I was concerned about how Cass would fare without Enzo Amore, as he hasn’t seemed quite as confident since his debut as Enzo has, but he acquitted himself very well here, and actually came out on top after goading Jericho by calling him S-A-W-F-T and then obliterating him with a big boot. It bodes very well for Cass that just weeks into his WWE career, he has been allowed to embarrass a respected veteran and it’s nice to see the company putting a bit of faith and effort into a rookie. This was a thoroughly effective way to kick off the show- it featured an original pairing of wrestlers in a segment with a good sense of humor and a sense of purpose. I’d rather have watched it twice than had to see Shane and Stephanie bickering about something.

Sami Zayn vs. The Miz: This was a rock solid match with something tangible riding on it, as Zayn had been promised a victory would make him an Intercontinental Championship contender. There was a nice contrast between Zayn’s boundless, bouncy energy and Miz’s more methodical in ring style and loathsome personality- you won’t find a better defined face-heel pairing on the roster, and it helps their chemistry together. Miz lost clean and that would be OK, since he’s hardly portrayed as a dominant, fearsome champion, but coming just after Charlotte also suffered defeat it felt kind of jarring, two champions losing back to back. It was a good match though, and I won’t complain too much about good matches.

A Shrunken Survivor Series Tag: Roman Reigns and the Usos met AJ Styles, Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows in a six man tag team elimination contest, and it was without question the best thing on the show. Not so much for the match itself, although that was pretty good, with lots of enjoyable wrestling only slightly marred by the oh so convenient ways they concocted to eliminate five people in the space of 15 minutes. It was the post match antics that really elevated it, with Styles and Reigns daring each other to swing a steel chair while the crowd buzzed with anticipation. It was understated and fantastically tense. As misguided as Reigns’ booking has often been as a singles wrestler, locking him in this feud with AJ has worked really well; it’s been a hugely enjoyable rivalry and has diffused some of the anger that greeted his coronation as WWE Champion. The focus is off him and on the relationship between Styles, Gallows and Anderson, and having Reigns fight three different men and not know for sure whether AJ is deceiving him is, slowly and quietly, actually making him somewhat vulnerable and sympathetic. Plus it gives him the chance to occasionally be a bad ass and fend off three men without it seeming contrived; it helps to be reminded what people liked about Roman Reigns in the first place. The most important angle in WWE right now is the most effective, and that’s a nice thing to be able to say.

puRgatoRy:
Charlotte vs. Paige: I’m no longer convinced that Paige is actually a very good pro wrestler, but our shared nationality and the fact that she’s not been doing anything in a while meant I was still pleased to see her get this opportunity against the Women’s Champion. Charlotte, for her part, continues to go from strength to strength as a heel, and so even though the in ring action wasn’t of the highest order I still felt there was a fair amount to enjoy here. It felt like a fresh match despite the fairly lengthy feud these two had at the tail end of last year, and I appreciate that. I’m not sure I appreciate the finish; I’m not sure what they were driving at with it. The story in the run-up to the match was that Ric Flair would be banned at ringside at Extreme Rules and Charlotte might not be able to cope, but this match ended with Flair inadvertently distracting his daughter, leading to her getting pinned, so the moral of the story is… Charlotte might be better off without him? I guess it make sense, but not in the context of this feud. Still, this was all pretty decent and watchable and served as a nice reminder that the Divas roster has some depth now.

The New Day vs. The Dudleyz: Jesus, there were a lot of distraction finishes on this show. By my count, it blighted half the matches on the show, including this one. It’s fine as a one off once in a while, but surely someone whose is paid to write pro wrestling shows should realize how irritating and off putting it is and try to use it as sparingly as possible? On the plus side, having found them at best hit and miss for months now I thought the New Day’s opening monologue was thoroughly entertaining. The match was OK. Something bad, something good, something middling. Into purgatory with this!

THE wRong:
Dolph Ziggler vs. Baron Corbin: If you’d told me that of the people who debuted on the Raw after WrestleMania it would be Baron Corbin that WWE gave up on the quickest, I’d have raised an eyebrow. But while Enzo & Big Cass have made a red hot start to their main roster careers, and Apollo Crews remains undefeated, even if he has been relegated to Superstars alarmingly quickly, Baron Corbin is locked in a deathly dull feud with Dolph Ziggler where he doesn’t even look particularly dominant. He won on Raw in an OK match but there was nothing memorable about it, which is also a reasonable summary of Corbin himself, and perhaps explains why it isn’t working for him. His arrival on Raw was understandable in the sense that he looks intimidating and you can see why certain higher ups would have found him appealing, but it’s an oddly timed call up when you consider that he was really growing on NXT and is now expected to make the best of things on the main roster when he’s only half formed. This feud is fast forward fodder for those who find Raw more watchable when they edit it down to an hour.

R-Truth vs. Fandango: The problem with this rivalry is that it’s impossible to care how these four geeks end up aligning themselves, whether it’s Goldango or the Gorgeous Truth or Gorgeous Gold or Truthdango. That’s not necessarily a bad thing because the storyline isn’t meant to be deep and layered and emotional, it’s meant to be funny. But it’s not funny. It’s just silly and boring, and I have no idea who WWE thinks enjoys it. Presumably someone backstage must…

Sin Cara vs. Rusev: Of all the roll up finishes on this Raw, the one that ended Sin Cara vs. Rusev was comfortably the most egregious. Kalisto and Lana get into a tiff on the floor, Kalisto kicks Rusev in the head, Sin Cara picks up a tainted victory. Rusev needs to be obliterating people for his character to work, but that is considered less important to WWE than shoehorning another fucking distraction roll-up onto the show. Sin Cara gains nothing from victory, Rusev looks weak in defeat, Kalisto looks petty, Lana looks useless. Nobody gets over!

THE Ridiculous:
NOTHING

The 1090th edition is over…

6.5

The final score: review Average

The 411

Sloppy booking aside, this was still a fairly good Raw, especially in comparison to episodes from before this much vaunted new era. The Shane-Stephanie stuff is simmering away harmlessly in the background, leaving Roman Reigns vs. AJ Styles as the most significant storyline on the show, and it's a really, really good one. It was also nice to see Big Cass get some shine, and the Intercontinental Championship picture is diverse and interesting. Good stuff is happening up and down the card, and even an entire army of distraction roll-ups can't quite hide that.