Reviewing the Review – Monday Night Raw: December 15, 2014
It’s finally time to start the build to the Royal Rumble and Lesnar vs. Cena III, which no one really wants to see but WWE has decided that it’s what we’re getting and we’re going to like it. In theory Lesnar is going to be here tonight so maybe things can get going. TLC was just a step above a disaster but there were a few bright spots so hopefully this picks things up a bit. Let’s get to it.
Jericho opened the show and talked about how awesome the crowd was. He wanted his Slammy back from Fandango, who stole it last week when Jericho wasn’t there. Instead he got Paul Heyman, who thinks he should be in charge tonight. Jericho said Heyman owes him $200 from a Best of Jericho tape in ECW. This brought them to Seth Rollins, who came out and said he beat Cena last night but had another win stolen from him, just like Sting did at Survivor Series.
Cena came out, said Rollins hasn’t learned to be a man yet, and made a cage match for later. Jericho wasn’t done yet though and made a match between himself and Heyman with the fans picking the stipulation (no holds barred, extreme rules or street fight). I think you all know where this is going, likely because this took nearly twenty five minutes to get through.
Big Show and Harper beat Rowan and Ziggler when Big Show knocked out Rowan. Again. At least it wasn’t a champion for a change.
Big E. apparently sweats on everyone. That’s the big idea about the character. Let that one sink in for a bit. Later in the night the New Day would beat the Dusts in a long match where they were clearly just filling in time.
Alicia Fox and Natalya beat the Bellas when Natalya made Brie tap out. The only thing of note here was Kidd checking on Nikki after the match.
Rusev and Lana were the guests on the Highlight Reel where Jericho implied that they wanted each other in a funny bit. Rusev actually showed some emotion here and it was actually working. The important part here was Ryback came out as Rusev’s next challenger. I could totally get behind that feud.
Kane destroyed Adam Rose in about a minute. The Bunny took a tombstone for good measure. This was a way to kill a few minutes.
Heyman and Jericho’s match never happened as we got the obvious ending of Brock returning to destroy Jericho. The best part though was Heyman saying he had no tricks up his sleeve, meaning he isn’t the Jew in jiujitsu.
Fandango came out to gloat but Reigns returned and knocked him out. Show tried to come out as well for revenge but Reigns Superman Punched him off the apron. This was how to make Reigns look like a monster and it worked really well.
Jimmy Uso beat Miz in an upset which made sense. After a break, Miz offered Naomi a spot on MizTV on Smackdown to continue the story.
Rollins still wants the Authority back.
The main event was a good cage match between Cena and Rollins which ran nearly twenty five minutes. There were several near escapes and near falls, but after Cena hit an AA from the top, Lesnar came out and destroyed him with German suplexes. Heyman shook Rollins’ hand, making it unclear of how long they had been working together, if at all. Rollins hit a Curb Stomp for the win.
Overall this show really needed the hour cut out. You could clip out five to ten minutes from the opening, the Kane vs. Rose stuff, a lot of New Day vs. the Dusts and some other stuff here and there to get this down to two hours and make it a very solid show. Unfortunately this wound up being the usual overdone episode of Raw which weighs down all the good things they had going on.
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I want Cena to beat Brock for the sole reason of putting WWE on hold this fall and producing some awful television as a result. I get it Lesnar needed the title after breaking the streak anyone of us would have made the same call. But i would have preferred it to be AT the Rumble where he destroyed Cena and took it to Mania. Have him face like Orton at Summerslam and Sheamus at Night of Champions or something