Reviewing the Review – Monday Night Raw: June 8, 2015
It’s the final show before Money in the Bank and the big story is WWE HIT HALF A BILLION SOCIAL MEDIA FOLLOWERS!!! Ignore the fact that a lot of them are probably the same people on a bunch of different platforms but WE CAN TOTALLY PUT THIS ON PRESS RELEASES AND BRAG ABOUT HOW AWESOME WE ARE BECAUSE PEOPLE TALK ABOUT US ONLINE EVEN THOUGH THEY DON’T WATCH THE TV SHOWS!!! Yeah let’s get to it.
The opening segment this week was Cena coming out and issuing another open challenge, which was answered by Kevin Owens. However, instead of challenging for the title, Owens thought someone might want to challenge for a REAL championship, such as his NXT Title. That’s such a great heel move and makes Owens come off as the most stuck on himself wrestler in the world, but that’s exactly the point because he already beat Cena.
Anyway, Cena tried to accept the challenge but Owens said Cena couldn’t accept because. Just because. The solution was to have someone come out and challenge for either title. This brought out Neville, who would love to challenge for the US Title at some point, but he knew what it felt like to hold Owens’ prize.
As you would expect, Neville vs. Owens was a great fourteen minute match with both guys hitting all their big stuff and throwing in some drama despite the ending being pretty obvious. That’s a sign of a good match and it worked really well here. This was another example of the NXT guys being allowed to be NXT guys instead of just any other guys and that’s the best thing that could happen to them in their early appearances on Raw.
After this, it was time to start bragging about the social media milestone, which would of course happen ALL NIGHT LONG. We’ll come back to this later, but we’ll start off by saying Michael Cole would later say “we’d like to congratulate WWE on this accomplishment”. Meaning WWE is congratulating itself. It’s nice to see them just admitting that’s what they’re doing.
Nikki Bella suggests that Paige has created her own problems and is all serious because she’s a totally serious character and not goofy whatsoever. Nikki then beat Summer Rae in a quick match.
In your standard hype segment, Kane tried to talk about Money in the Bank but everyone came out to interrupt him. This included R-Truth, who talked about being in the match, was told that he wasn’t, and left. That’s one of the funniest things I’ve seen in WWE in a long time, because again, they’re using people who are actually funny instead of just having people do things that are considered funny.
Sheamus beat Orton via DQ in a repeat of their match last week. I have no desire to see these two fight ever again, which is why I’d assume we see them at Battleground.
Rollins ran his mouth to the Stooges and is going to fight them later tonight as a result. This goes along with Rollins’ lines about how he doesn’t need anyone.
Kane beat Dolph Ziggler thanks to Rusev scaring Lana (with the shiniest legs I’ve seen this side of Stacy Keibler). I’m so over this Rusev is broken story and wish they would just let him go off and heal instead of having him look like a sad puppy because Lana has left him. On another note, is Lana doing anything for Ziggler or vice versa?
Both of them are in a story but nothing is happening in it other than Rusev. You could have Lana just walking around and do the exact same thing, which shows how worthless this pairing has been. It should be charging Ziggler up a bit but instead we’re in the same place but with a hot Russian blonde around him. The match was as dull as you would expect Kane vs. Ziggler to be, mainly because Dolph is the exact same character he’s been for years now.
MizTV set up Big Show vs. Miz vs. Ryback in a three way feud, which is going to kick off after Sunday’s pay per view. I see no reason to not just start it now and have the triple threat on Sunday, but this is the kind of feud that needs time to breath I guess. Both guys treating Miz like a joke of an afterthought was funny stuff. Big Show took Shell Shock, because why wait for Sunday to do that when you could get another 384 social media followers by doing it on Raw?
The Wyatts squashed Los Matadores with a 3D. Apparently the Dudleys were annoyed because no one is ever allowed to use a move before. And yes, they used the Doomsday Device back in 2000/2001. Harper said the judgment was coming.
Now we get to the big story of the night: INSTAGRAM! Yeah since tonight was a big deal because of social media (and you know Stephanie was right there cheering it on with her business savvy and pumping everyone full of talks about branding and how important it is to get the proper names out there because that’s what wrestling has become.
Anyway, the idea was that Dean Ambrose was making his way through New Orleans towards the arena, and he sent in a bunch of Instagram photos to prove it. Remember the days when you might get a promo from Ambrose about these things so he could hype up the match? Well forget that, because it’s all about using the stories to get more social media followers. Another reason I detest most usage of social media these days.
Big E. beat Titus O’Neal in a quick match to set up the Tag Team Title match on Sunday.
Roman Reigns beat Kofi Kingston in a better match than you would expect. Ambrose arrived after the match to watch the main event.
The Stooges beat Rollins using some interference from Ambrose, which of course sent people into hysterics, because NO WORLD CHAMPION HAS EVER LOST A MATCH. Not HHH to Jim Ross or John Cena to Kevin Federline. Nope, those never happened and Rollins is officially the lamest champion ever because of one loss that no one is going to care about a week later because that’s how wrestling works.
Overall this show did a decent enough job to build towards Sunday, but it does nothing to hide the fact that they care far more about social media and getting in a press release than being a major wrestling promotion. Those days are long gone and it’s very sad to see, but such is life when you have someone who thinks social media is the be all and end all of wrestling, right down to not letting heels be mean to fans because those fans might talk about it on said social media. You know, like they’re supposed to so people want to see the heels get beaten up. Like in wrestling.
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