Last week’s episode of RAW was decidedly average, but at least it ended with what was, in hindsight, a very good match. This week, however, everything felt so…subdued. RAW’s supposed to be WWE’s flagship show, which means how the crowd responds to what they see on RAW is critical to how the show comes across to the audience watching on TV.
If the live audience cheers and is boisterous in general, that’s a good sign because it shows they have a degree of interest in the product. Conversely, if they’re quiet, it’s a sign of apathy or boredom (unless it’s a Japanese audience, which is quiet out of respect for the wrestlers).
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This week’s RAW was taped from London, England, which meant it wasn’t technically live but aired in the same timeslot as a regular live show. Because of this delay in taping, what we got on TV was a RAW that had the usual symptoms of over-production: frequent camera angle transitions, cutting of certain things seen on the program, and HEAVY editing of crowd noise.
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It wouldn’t be hyperbole to argue that, during some segments, the audience was as quiet as though they were at a funeral.
And without further ado, let the rant begin.
Wins and losses don’t matter
This was a wrestling-heavy show, with more matches than normal, which is, in itself, a good sign for RAW. However, the central theme of this show was that none of none of these matches mattered whatsoever. The reason I say this was that the few big matches that took place on RAW lost all of their significance in moments.
Seth Rollins wrestled Samoa Joe and defeated him once again. Three months ago, Joe was a credible threat that was undefeated on the main roster. Now he’s just a guy on RAW that exchanges wins and losses at random with his pre-selected rival of the week. There’s no story here, especially since Joe attacked Rollins immediately afterwards.
If the entire point was to make Joe look strong in his continued rivalry against Rollins, why was it necessary for Joe to lose in the actual match? Why not book Joe to look as dominant as possible, in the hopes of making it look like Rollins actually has a mountain to climb if he wants to defeat him decisively?
Unfortunately, this, like many other of WWE’s rivalries, involves a back-and-forth exchange of wins and losses with little-to-no justification behind them. Small wonder that a lot of fans simply do not care about WWE’s rivalries; they go so fast and develop at such an alarming rate that fans don’t have enough time to process the implications of this win or that loss.
Bray Wyatt got a win over Dean Ambrose this week, though unfortunately, this confrontation didn’t feel as fresh as WWE had hoped it would. To many, the memory of Ambrose vs. Wyatt from three years ago still comes up, including that goofy spot when Ambrose was defeated at the hands of an exploding television.
In this case, a clean, decisive win couldn’t happen either. Wyatt won following shenanigans courtesy of the Miz approaching the ring towards the match’s climax.
I do not understand this bizarre obsession of WWE’s of having so many wrestlers interfere in big matches. By interfering and causing shenanigans in a match’s conclusion, it suggests that the wrestler that does win didn’t do so cleanly, and makes it seem as though that wrestler isn’t good enough to win on their own.
This prevents people from caring about those wrestlers because they come across to the fans as cowards or pansies.
Want more proof? Consider the case of Brock Lesnar. When was the last time a Lesnar match featured interference from anyone (other than Seth Rollins, but that’s a unique case)? It rarely happens, if ever, because Lesnar has the legitimacy and the reputation to beat someone cleanly and decisively.
This turns Lesnar into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Lesnar (who, for the record, was not on this show), is a big star because he has a legitimate background in MMA and wins the majority of his matches cleanly. And even when he loses, however rarely that occurs, he still looks like an unstoppable monster in defeat.
Then there’s someone like Seth Rollins. In his feud with Triple H, much of the progression of the storyline involved cheap interference from one party or another. Seth rarely looked dominant, and Triple H’s biggest advantages were Rollins’ injury and that he had Samoa Joe in his pocket.
Now, both Joe and Seth are exchanging wins as if they’re playing a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, and often screw each other over by interfering. In doing things this way, both of them end up looking like underhanded cowards, and both lose any degree of credibility or badassery because their victories are underhanded.
While there’s always a place for underhanded heels in wrestling, would it really hurt WWE that much to book one heel at least partially like Brock Lesnar? I don’t think so.
Cesaro and Sheamus deserve some praise
Wrestling for half an hour is never an easy task, especially when you have multiple opponents. But that’s what Cesaro and Sheamus did this week, and in this case, they’ve earned some recognition for it.
Cesaro and Sheamus won a tag team turmoil match to determine the new #1 Contenders for the RAW Tag Team Championships. They beat four other teams, two of which were former tag champions in their own rights.
What we got here was a good showing from two of the most underrated wrestlers in WWE that are still working as hard as possible to make this tag team shtick work.
My only gripe with this match was that Cesaro ended the last match with the dreaded roll-up. This made zero sense, especially considering that WWE has promoted Cesaro for months as this highly-versatile and incredibly skilled wrestler.
If he’s so skilled, why would he need to win with a move so cheap that any novice wrestler can do it? It makes Cesaro look less impressive, especially considering he has several moves in his arsenal that are substantially more impressive than the dreaded roll-up.
A mixed bag for the women
Give credit to WWE for at least trying new stuff and teasing some new angles. Alexa Bliss being ‘friends’ with Nia Jax is unique, and thus far they haven’t done anything inherently ‘bad’, per se. That said, Jax is the kind of wrestler that simply should not talk.
They’re trying to present her as this unstoppable force of a wrestler due to her size, but it’s hard to convince us that she’s that dangerous when she speaks. Her voice is rather high-pitched, and so when she speaks, it contrasts greatly with her character.
She’s like a female Tyler Reks; they tried to make him look absolutely menacing with his bizarre haircut and intimidating move-set. But when he started speaking, his voice was decidedly monotone and bereft of ‘fear’. Heck, Kaval was half his size yet had a much deeper voice.
It felt weird hearing these two men talk that way, which is also how it feels to hear Nia Jax speak.
As for the RAW Women’s Champion, this was not a good outing for her. While her promo work was quite good, her in-ring work was not; in fact, it felt very ‘basic’. Bliss won with a boring forearm smash, which didn’t seem to have any impetus behind it.
While she normally wins with a generic DDT, at least that move has some snap to it to make it look more painful. This was a step down from her usual work, so let’s hope she does better next time.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, we got a two-minute match between Sasha Banks and Alicia Fox that literally had no meaning. It was a squash match without any storyline or importance. In watching this, I felt for a moment as though we had regressed back to the days of the pre-women’s revolution when such matches were commonplace.
I have since expected to see insignificant matches of this type in the Cruiserweight division (which, unsurprisingly, also happened this week), but not with Sasha Banks, arguably the top woman on RAW in terms of athletic potential.
No Reigns or Strowman in-ring action for a while
Oh boy, is the RAW roster ever in trouble. The Strowman/Reigns rivalry has been arguably the most important and interesting thing on RAW for months now, especially after that now-famous post-interview beat-down. Now both Reigns and Strowman are injured for a short time, with reports suggesting Strowman will be out of major action for 4-8 weeks.
This is bad because Strowman has become something of a cult hero in WWE. Not only have his actions against Reigns, in particular, made him a fan favourite, but his general work has also made him so popular.
Can you name another near-400-pounder that can perform such impressive acts of strength and also do a kip-up like Shawn Michaels? I doubt it.
With this rivalry how on the bench due to injury, RAW’s roster is getting thinner. We’re already missing the Revival due to injury, and now Strowman is out as well. Add to this an absent Universal Champion in Brock Lesnar, and you have a relatively depleted roster that most casual fans won’t care about.
Indeed, the pressure is on for those in the Intercontinental title picture and the relative newcomers to RAW (chief among them are Bray Wyatt and a returning Finn Balor). With the obvious top guys on RAW now unable to wrestle, for the time being, it’s critical for WWE to give more emphasis to the stars that remain so that the ratings don’t plummet too much.
While these injuries aren’t as crippling as those of top stars from the Attitude Era (think Steve Austin or Triple H), an injury at the wrong time can harm RAW’s product severely. As much as some can deny it, Lesnar, Reigns and to a slightly lesser extent Strowman, were/are RAW’s three top draws, and without them, RAW is in trouble.
Any sane booker would look at this situation and think, ‘dammit, better shift the show to the smaller and healthy workhorses that are on now. Maybe they can help with the ratings’.
But who are we kidding here? Does anyone really think that anyone other than Reigns or Strowman is going to reach the very top of the roster, even if they’re currently healthy?
Final words
Last week’s RAW ended with a good match in terms of quality, though it did have a screwy finish that’s all too commonplace in WWE. This week, WWE took that finish and basically re-hashed it with this week’s main event, with the only difference being that a few people changed roles.
If this wasn’t proof that WWE sees its wrestlers as interchangeable pieces to fit a puzzle without clearly-defined roles and characteristics, I don’t know what is.
All in all, something felt off with this show, despite a few silver linings in the form of some good matches (though none were particularly great). Maybe it was the crowd noise sounding less vocal than normal, despite this being the UK, one of the biggest hubs of wrestling on the planet.
If you didn’t see this show, that’s alright; apart from an IC title match being announced for next week, nothing truly special or shocking happened.
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