Reviewing the Review – Monday Night Raw: August 4, 2014
We’re still in the dry stretch before we get to Summerslam and that makes for some very uninteresting hours of television. The fact that Lesnar, Cena and Heyman were all absent from Monday’s show didn’t make things any better. That’s not to say the show was a disaster though so let’s get to it.
The Authority opened the show and let’s get this out of the way: they plugged the Network and it’s $9.99 price ALL NIGHT LONG. Yeah it gets annoying, but at the same time, what are you expecting them to do? The company’s future depends a lot on that thing succeeding and the international release is going to help them out a lot. I don’t care for it either, but it’s something I can live with for the sake of the future.
The point of the promo was to set up the night’s festivities: Ambrose vs. Del Rio and Rollins vs. Van Dam in a Beat the Clock Challenge with the winner getting to pick the stipulation at Summerslam, Stephanie and Brie having a contract signing, and Orton being ticked off at Reigns for various reasons. Reigns came out and wanted to fight, but got a match with Kane instead.
Reigns beat Kane in a pretty weak Last Man Standing match. I don’t care for putting these matches together on the fly like this, especially when this would have been a better option for Battleground. Reigns beating another World Champion is a good thing, but Kane has really started to hit rock bottom on these things. He’s just there anymore and it’s getting hard to sit through.
We got the first of two videos on Brock vs. Cena. These were really well done and made Brock sound like a person instead of just a killing machine. That’s a good thing as it adds another level of character to him.
Mark Henry returned and destroyed Damien Sandow, who was playing an Oklahoma Sooner football player this week. I’m guessing this was a shot at JR and I really don’t mind it that much. It’s not like it was that insulting. It was just cheap heat.
Ambrose beat Del Rio in a long and not very good match. Del Rio beat on Ambrose’s bad arm for his usual good psychology but Ambrose hit Dirty Deeds with the other arm (his right arm) for the pin. That didn’t do much for me as it wouldn’t seem to matter which arm he used. This would be Del Rio’s last televised match in WWE and I can’t say I’m going to miss him that much.
Rusev beat Sin Cara on the App in his usual style. I have no idea why I’m supposed to care about that. Colter came out and did the usual back and forth with Lana before Rusev beat up Swagger.
Dolph Ziggler pinned Cesaro in a quick match while Miz talked trash. Nothing to see here.
Paige hopes AJ gets better soon. These segments are all so short that there isn’t much to talk about.
Goldust and Stardust beat Ryback and Curtis Axel because that’s what these teams do.
Kane took off his mask and gave it to the Authority. I really don’t care about this anymore given how many times it’s happened now.
Bray Wyatt got Luke Harper disqualified against Chris Jericho, meaning Harper is barred from ringside at Summerslam. Why this match got five minutes with all the other nonsense we had to sit through is beyond me, as these two seem capable of having a great fifteen or so minute match.
Diego beat Fandango again, but this time Hornswoggle got to dance with Torito and the girls. This is time that could have gone to Harper vs. Jericho.
Orton had very little to say about Roman Reigns.
Bo Dallas beat R-Truth with a quick rollup, making the loss last week seem meaningless.
Bray Wyatt said his usual schtick.
Another Lesnar vs. Cena video with a lot of the same clips from earlier.
Heath Slater replaced RVD (injured) in the match with Rollins. Ambrose came out for a great series of distractions, allowing Slater to get a rollup pin. Dean is so perfect for this role and it works like a charm.
Stephanie and Brie had their contract signing with Stephanie beating up both Bellas. We need the big names back, if nothing else so we don’t have to put up with this closing the shows anymore.
The show was far longer than interesting. There’s about a two hour stretch in there that drags on for so long because everything is so quick and dull that it’s hard to care about it one way or another. Summerslam really needs to get here so we can have something new to watch though. It’s really not working right now and a lot of that is due to the focus on Brie vs. Stephanie. I’m still waiting on an explanation for how this match is historic, but it might be because it’s the least interesting match to close back to back Raws in years.
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I totally forgot the PPV was next week and not today.
I don’t understand the “What did you think they’d do?” argument I’ve been hearing in regards to them promoting the network. There’s a big difference between promoting and total and utter overkill.
Well their future depends on the network. So it’s kind of important for people to hear about it.
Did you not read what I just wrote? Clearly you’re the reason the Network needs to be mentioned thirty times per show.
No I get what you mean by overkill.
But with a 3 hour show and the worldwide launch approaching, it’s better to overkill in this situation. People tune in and out during the 3 hours and they really have not been promoting the Network that much recently. This way they can catch all the people tuning in and out. While most people are aware of the Network, most probably do not remember the worldwide launch date. So WWE hammers that date along with the price (probably also forgotten in the places that the Network hasn’t launches yet) which increases awareness. So overkill is warranted in this situation.
Clearly you have a gigantic stick up your ass.
You’re an idiot if you think this level of overkill is necessary.