Reviewing the Review: Monday Night Raw – March 16, 2015

There are three weeks to go before Wrestlemania and the big question is simple: will anyone dare insult the memory of Andre the Giant, thereby ticking off the company’s top villain and having Stephanie rip them to shreds in a segment that has nothing to do with what’s going on at the moment and only serves to get Stephanie TV time? Let’s get to it.

We crank up the stupid right off the bat this week as Orton and the Authority opened the show. Here’s the REALLY short version of what happened: Orton threatened them, told them his plan to get revenge on Rollins, said he was kidding, and then, through a series of very convenient coincidences, carried out his plan later in the night and destroyed Rollins to end the show.

Does this company have any idea how to even do the most basic stories correctly these days? Randy Orton is a psycho, he comes back and hurts Rollins, Seth wants revenge at Wrestlemania. Or Orton comes back nice and calm, says he’s seen the error of his ways, infiltrates the Authority and takes them out one by one before it’s only Orton vs. Rollins at Wrestlemania.

Instead, this is what we get: Orton returns as a psycho, calms down and infiltrates the Authority (thanks to Stephanie yelling at him because that’s the ultimate power in WWE), tells them their plan, gets lucky that Stephanie ejected Big Show and Kane earlier in the night, then beats Rollins to a pulp, leaving almost no logical reason to set up the match at Wrestlemania and giving us no reason to have a match without a gimmick, which we’ll likely get anyway.

This whole story has been a mess because they don’t seem to know what they want to do. It’s a simple idea of just setting up an idea and then executing it. Look at this Reviewing the Review. I knew what I wanted to do with it and then started writing it out. I didn’t start talking about Raw, break into a recipe for how to baste a turkey, talk about Raw some more and then end by pasting the third act of the script to Con Air. Just please WWE, stop making up these stories week by week and then thinking trying to fill in the gaps in your horrible logic after you’re done.

Daniel Bryan beat Bad News Barrett and Dean Ambrose beat Stardust in your Intercontinental Title shenanigans of the week. They’ve finally calmed down with the stealing the title and just let the people fight each other, which calms me down quite a bit. The wrestling was nothing to see but what do you expect with two matches not combining to last fifteen minutes?

Connor the Crusher is getting the Warrior Award at the Hall of Fame. If you don’t smile at this at least a little bit…..eh I’ve got nothing here. You should like it.

Heyman and Lesnar came out to say the exact same things they’ve said for two months. There’s no reason for these guys to be fighting other than Reigns won the Rumble. They might have something with Reigns just doing what people says he can’t, but we’re WAY too late for that to work. It also doesn’t help when it’s a gladiator doing what other gladiators can’t do, but at least it’s something.

Big Show knocked out Kane by mistake (this is different than the time a few weeks ago when he knocked him out on Smackdown and it was never mentioned again) for a loss to Ryback and Rowan. Somehow they’ve linked Survivor Series to the Andre battle royal. That’s just impressive.

Mizdow rapped about Miz. This wasn’t funny.

Wiz Khalifa rapped. This wasn’t funny or necessary.

The Bellas made Flintstones puns about themselves. This wasn’t funny, necessary, or anything but a way for me to extend this bit to a third entry.

AJ pinned Summer in a match that accomplished nothing, other than allowing me to look at Summer Rae.

“Sting” narrated a video about his match with HHH. I’ve listened to Sting talk for 25 years and I’ve never heard him talk like that.

Cena yelled at the Russians and told them to respect America. Rusev then beat Curtis Axel in 26 seconds. Axel didn’t get to do his schtick and was completely destroyed. In other words, this was WWE getting annoyed that someone got over with a clever idea and made sure to crush (see what I did there?) him right before our eyes.

The big story here was that Cena came out and massacred Rusev, quickly putting him in the STF and knocking him out before doing it again and making him tap. The only way he let it go was for Lana to give him a US Title shot. Rusev yelled at Lana, sending her to the set of some movie. Rusev could be in major trouble but we’ll get to see how strong he is on his own.

Tyson Kidd and Cesaro lost because they’re champions. What makes it even worse is they lost to New Day, who I like but their momentum is dead. This transitioned into Naomi beating Natalya and Los Matadores beating the Usos. We’re probably getting a four way at Wrestlemania, or at least we would have if Jey hadn’t busted his shoulder.

Bray Wyatt had the urn and talked a lot until Undertaker sent lightning to set Bray’s chair on fire and make their match official. This was fine.

Reigns beat Orton and Rollins to set up Orton’s beatdown on Rollins.

This show was better than last week’s, but it’s still just another entry in a really bad build to Wrestlemania. At the end of the day, they have no focus and it’s showing more and more every week. Look at the Orton story again. He was angry, then he was calm, then they went with angry again. Pick something and go with it, just like they need to do in the main event feud. This week was indeed better, and a lot of that was due to less talking. Fight already.

Remember to follow me on Twitter @kbreviews and pick up my new book on the History of Saturday Night’s Main Event at Amazon for just $3.99 at:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00SATPVKW

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