The Raw Re-Write 12.07.2015

Welcome to the Raw Re-Write, with Daniel Wilcox.

For far too long now, Raw has been creatively stale and a chore to get through. The problems are many, and the majority of them have been discussed at length. That isn’t the aim of this new weekly feature. Instead, I will look at Raw each week and break down the subtle creative changes that could have been made to make the show better. The idea isn’t to completely change the product or fantasy book something drastically different, but to find more intriguing and entertaining ways of getting to WWE Creative’s desired ends.

You can check out last week’s debut edition here.

The League of Nations Talks, Everybody Else Talks, and the 4-Way Elimination Tag

Last week, a new main event heel stable was established, so it makes sense to have them open the show to maybe explain the alliance, but that didn’t really happen. Instead, Sheamus rambled on until everyone else came out. I will say, it was cool and logical for the Wyatt Family to take exception to a new four-man stable putting themselves over as “the best of the best,” and again it was logical for the Dudleyz and then Roman Reigns crew to get involved. It made for a chaotic and unpredictable opening to Monday Night Raw and was a welcome change from the usual Authority promo. I have no issues with the Authority taking a backseat for a while as they did on this show. What was absolutely baffling was the decision to come back from a commercial and have that in progress. By all means, go to the break, come back and have your mammoth 16-man brawl with floods of referees and security trying and failing to control the situation. Then book the match for the main event. That’s a reason to watch; a never-before-seen match featuring four teams of four. And lose the elimination stipulation; all four teams have big matches on Sunday, and you had three of them get beat here, including the much-damaged Wyatts early on, and your brand fucking new heel stable at the end. More on this later, when we talk about the show-closing promo, but to summarise – and I feel like this applies to a lot of most week’s shows – decent idea, horrible execution.

Dolph Ziggler vs. Kevin Owens

Last week, Owens missed Raw due to illness while Ziggler tied his series with Tyler Breeze at 1-1. So I understand the logical of featuring Owens in a long showing and having him go over cleanly but there are issues here. Firstly, We’ve just had a 20-minute match, and now here’s another one almost immediately after. That’s a pacing issue. The last two matches on this show ran about five minutes in total, so do a little bit of re-juggling so you’re not presenting similar matches one after the other. Secondly, Ziggler is presumably heading to a rubber match with Breeze on the TLC kick-off show, not that anybody’s bothered to promote it, so he could have used a win somewhere on this show, as could Tyler. Admittedly, you can’t run the same Ziggler/Ambrose v. Owens/Breeze match, because we had that two weeks ago. Give Owens a quick squash over a guy like Zach Ryder, a little bit of promo time to remind us that he’s feuding with Ambrose, then do your popcorn gimmick with Ambrose if you must. Then later on have Ziggler or Breeze quickly dispatch some other enhancement talent and Ziggler lay down the challenge for the blow-off on Sunday. It’s not like this match was particularly good anyway. Remember, it’s takes more than a 20-minute allocation to make a match entertaining.

Alicia Fox and Brie Bella vs. Sasha Banks and Naomi

I don’t really have any issues here. This was the logical progression from last week’s Banks/Bella match. The action was perfectly acceptable. The right team went over because there seems to be no plans for Team Bella until Nikki is fit, and Team BAD has been doing good work. The heels managed to get the win without Tamina getting involved as well, so that’s always appreciated. We then had the little interaction with New Day, which was bizarrely entertaining, especially for fans who follow social media and know the hijinks that goes on between these teams. I also like it when segments bleed into each other, as we immediately went into the New Day/Dragons match post-commercial. Things like that give viewers a reason to stay tuned in. On that note and in the only complaint I have with the segment, we had Team BAD make its entrance before a break, and when we come back we get a Neville/Miz backstage bit. Just swap those two around so the product isn’t so jarring, please.

The New Day vs. The Lucha Dragons

The New Day have been at risk of becoming over-exposed on WWE television, because they are the most entertaining thing going in most people’s eyes. They had four or five segments last week. This was better. The group’s pre-match spiel was fun, particularly the saving a cat thing. Unfortunately, not a single Raw can go by without a distraction finish as the Usos mixed it up with Woods at ringside and Kofi got rolled up. The question is, why book this match in the first place considering the pay-per-view coming up this week? Give the champs a dominant win over Los Matadors or something, with the Usos on commentary and the Dragons watching from the aisle. Then do whatever post-match angle you want to build to Sunday. Also, I believe this was the first time the Ladder Match stipulation was mentioned, and even though I advocated it being added last week, it was thrown out as if we were supposed to have known about it this whole time. If you have a potential show-stealing match booked for your PPV/special event, promote the shit out of it.

Miz TV with Charlotte and Ric Flair

OK, so I quite liked this. Charlotte came across as much more comfortable accentuating a heelish side to here character while the Miz played Devil’s advocate well. With a guy like Miz, you can have him toe that line of a face/heel because you have no major plans for him, and he’s so good at drawing heat when he needs to so this was fine. Paige got a big face response, which I think was expected. I’m really not sure if the plan is to hit the reset button with Charlotte/Paige but it seems that way. Then you have the uncertainty of Becky Lynch, who could be a factor Sunday. The point is, I’m not sure where this is going but they’ve played it well enough that I look forward to finding out.

Rusev vs. Ryback

These guys fought last week to a count-out finish, and we got more of that here, except Lana and Rusev pulled the wool over Ryback’s eyes and beat him down. Remember last week when I said they shouldn’t toy with the face/heel dynamic here? They got it right this week with the devilish Rusev tricking the gentlemanly Ryback. But then, why not just do that right off the bat last week? So now we’ll get a pay-per-view match out of this, but we’ve seen them work a total of 20-minutes over the last two weeks. Run the same angle in half the time, allocate that spare time to other things, like promos building to TLC and such.

Jack Swagger vs. Stardust

Last week, Alberto del Rio squashed Goldust, and this week his US Championship challenger bested Stardust in similar fashion. Good work. That’s logical. Guys who will be featured on your big shows should be beating guys who won’t. We got the forced post-match antics with the chairs to further establish the gimmick for Sunday, and then the business with Colter. Again, it looks as though they’re hitting the reset button with del Rio, whose partnership with Colter just hasn’t worked and the MexAmerica thing has sucked the life out of crowds. I would imagine Colter now realigns with Swagger or disappears from TV once again.

Braun Strowman vs. Tommy Dreamer

The first issue here, as I eluded to earlier, is booking consecutive squash matches. You opened the show with two 20-minute competitive bouts, and close with two sub-3-minute washes. That’s bad pacing. Other than that, this served its purpose of reminding people that these eight men will face off on Sunday and that Strowman is currently the only threat that Wyatt Family possesses because so far he has been unstoppable.

Sheamus and Roman Reigns Talk, Fight, and No One Cares

So this segment should have been scrapped all together in favour of the 16-man 4-way tag match that kicked off the show, minus the elimination stipulation. No one needs to hear Sheamus and Reigns go back and forth on the mic for 10-minutes, and I think most can agree that the promos were pretty damn horrible. So run the tag match, have The Dudleyz and Wyatts brawl through the crowd and to the back leaving Reigns’ Family and the League of Nations. From there, you can either go with the same finish with Reigns pinning Sheamus, but that’s a pointless story to tell when there are no potential pin falls in their forthcoming TLC match. Alternatively, Reigns can get the pin on Barrett, who has nothing set for the pay-per-view, or you go to a no-contest because you don’t need your brand new heel stable losing on its first time out. You can then go to the Spear through a table spot that they decided on anyway, but you don’t have to make the audience sit through a tortuous dialogue from Reigns and Sheamus.

Final Thoughts: I think unsurprisingly, we have many of the same issues as we did last week in terms of poor pacing, certain things not being given a sufficient allocation of time, and the general lay-out of the show leading to a consensus of apathy. It’s difficult to write a 3-hour show every week, undoubtedly, but it can be done and still be entertaining. The opening was great in terms of creating an atmosphere of unpredictability, but they could have played that up throughout the show, building to the main event instead of blowing their load in the first 40 minutes and leaving us with an unsatisfying main event promo. Outside of that, the show generally built well to the key matches at Tables, Ladders and Chairs and was a slight improvement on last week, but not by much. Sadly, the only thing people are likely to remember from this show is the closing promo, and that’ll be for all the wrong reasons. “Tater tots” is the new “sufferin’ succotash.”

Thanks for reading.

Daniel Wilcox is a lifelong fanatic of music, movies and professional wrestling and a writing enthusiast, both critically and creatively. Having contributed to 411Mania since 2006, Daniel is thankful for the platform 411 provides and for every reader who takes the time to indulge his opinions.

Keep up with me on Facebook and Twitter.

Don’t forget to follow 411 on Twitter and like us on Facebook.