What was wrong with Raw: Orton's baby face run ruined?

There were a lot of positive things that came out of the post Fastlane edition of Raw this week, unfortunately, the things listed below were not one of those things. Raw suffered in a few spots this week, particularly in regards to their buildup of certain feuds heading into WrestleMania 31. From Diva matches that lasted literally under a minute, to one of Roman Reigns weakest promos ever, we count down the five things that were wrong with Monday Night Raw last night. We also have a recap of The Main event, just incase you missed it!

#1 Opening Segment

The opening segment on Raw made no sense! I was expect Randy Orton to RKO Stephanie McMahon, and get a huge pop, but of course that never happened. Instead, we were treated to 15 minutes of Stephanie and Big Show talking about Orton rejoining The Authority. This seems to be a hit on the audience’s intelligence, because Orton’s face turn would make little to no sense if they just go back and turn him heel.

The fans know that Orton will most likely face Rollins at WM 31, so why even try to have them join forces again? We all know Orton’s nailing Rollins with a RKO sooner or later! WWE needs to stop insulting fans intelligence, and build a better story then this. I swear fans have seen this cliché so many times before, and it’s not event believable. If anything, it could confuse the audience and hurt Orton’s face turn, if it continues on like this.

#2 Roman Reigns Segment

Despite being a fan of Roman Reigns, I still feel like he did very poorly during his segment with Paul Heyman. The mad scientist did everything in his power to build up Roman Reigns, even saying that he could beat the likes of Triple H, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Hulk Hogan and The Rock in their prime. The problem with this segment is, it dragged on for far too long, and didn’t offer anything new to the rivalry at all.

Reigns was pretty dry during the closing of the segment anyway, with his best line being” After I get done with what I’m going to do to Brock Lesnar, He isn’t going to like me anyways” I was expecting so much more out of a family member of The Rock, but I guess we are just not going to get it. I also can’t stand how they want to build Reigns up as the underdog here. He’s not a believable underdog whatsoever.

He is 300 plus pounds of dominance and the WWE needs to build him as such. Reigns is in all seriousness the most even matchup Brock Lesnar will face during his title Reign, so why bother and try to build it up like its Daniel Bryan or Chris Beniot versus Lesnar, when it’s not. These two men are just about on equal footing physique wise, making this underdog story unbelievable at best.

#3 The Ascension Loses

The match was too short and not decisive enough for my liking. The fact that PTP win off of a role up pin is even more ridiculous. I though The Ascension would be The WWE’s top tag team upon entering the main roster, but the powers that be seem perfectly content with keeping them out of the title picture, and giving them pointless storylines that seem to blow over in a week or two.

I’m not exactly mad that they lost to the PTP, but the fact that Konner and Victor have never been given enough time to showcase what they can really do in the ring, annoys me to no end. I like the fact that The Ascension attacked PTP, thus creating sympathy for Darren Young and Titus O’Neil, and the fact that their actually establishing a decent storyline here, but the fact that The Ascension isn’t battling The Uso’s or Cesaro and Tyson Kidd, makes me think that Konnor and Victor won’t last long on the main roster. Especially if the WWE is recycling on tag teams to feud with them.

#4 John Cena, Rusev Promo

Cena comes back with his whole” I took Rusev to the limit” routine, while Rusev continues to mock America alongside his manager, Lana. The only new development in this story, is Cena’s intention to bring The U.S title back to American soil, which surprise, he will no doubt do at WrestleMania 31. The story can’t end any other way than this now.

Cena has already suffered his big loss at Fastlane, and there is no way in hell WWE will let him take another one at WrestleMania 31. So basically, the streak of Rusev is screwed, and he will become just another victim on Cena’s buried list. It’s too predictable, and doesn’t strengthen the WrestleMania 31 card in any way. If WWE would have went ahead and let Rusev suffer his first loss at Fastlane, maybe that would have allowed for WWE to change up the story a bit, and give Rusev the win at Mania, but now there is no chance of that happening!

#5 30 Second Diva Match

Is it just me, or do Diva matches just keep getting shorter and shorter. Paige was miffed about her loss to Nicki at Fastlane and tried to attack The Bella twins before the bell even rang. I understand that they wanted to portray Paige as angry to further the story, but why not have Paige do that in the course of a match as well? It would have been great to have Paige get in the match and get disqualified for attacking Brie in the corner or something.

Instead, we get a quick face buster on Emma by Brie, who pins her in less than thirty seconds. Sure Paige attacks Brie after the match, and yes that does move the story along, but it was so fast, that it’s hard to believe that anyone in The WWE is taking The Divas division seriously right now. I like that fact that Nikki said,” Don’t ever attack my sister”, obviously a prelude to Paige taking out Brie, to get another shot at Nikki’s title, but again too fast to be taken too seriously.

#6 Main Event

Let me start out by saying that, Roman Reigns had one of his best match sequences of all time in Monday Night’s main event. He hit close line after close line, nailed a Samoan drop, and even countered Rollins with a huge Superman punch, which brought the crowd to their feet. With that being said, Bryan still delivered the final blow, after tagging himself in, and rolled Rollins up for the win.

This makes me think that there is still hope for Daniel Bryan in The WrestleMania 31 main event. Well that and the fact that he still has no opponent for WrestleMania either. Orton got frustrated during the match, when Rollins tagged himself in, causing him to jump off the apron and start yelling at Big Show and Kane about leaving, but a pat on the shoulder after the match was all Rollins received from Orton, as he exited the arena.

It’s probably a good idea not to have Orton go after Rollins immediately, that way, it’s more of a surprise when he finally does RKO Rollins to set up their match at WrestleMania 31. As for Reigns, despite a pretty tame promo at the beginning of the show, Reigns looks particularly fine-tuned and ready to face Lesnar at Mania for the title. BELIEVE THAT!