Reviewing the Review: Monday Night Raw – September 28, 2015
This is a weird spot for WWE as they’re building up to a house show before they start building up to Hell in a Cell. Unfortunately that means we’re going to be in for a lot of Big Show, though fortunately it means we’re in for a lot more of the New Day and there’s nothing wrong with that. Let’s get to it.
They got right to the point with the US Open Challenge. Cena said anyone could come get some and it’s Xavier Woods taking the challenge. Of course this led to some hilarious shenanigans from all three members of New Day which I can’t do justice by just typing them up here. Cena no sold most of this and looked more like a villain who was being all serious. That being said, I really like the idea of Cena treating the title like the most important thing in the world and not something worthy of joking about.
As you might expect, Cena gave Woods the best match of his career before New Day came in for the DQ. That brought out the Dudleyz for a six man, which New Day actually won when Cena was knocked to the floor. This was entertaining and a good way to kill some time. Just like last week, it’s a better idea to start a show with action rather than spending twenty minutes setting up the night’s action.
Here’s the big story of the first half of the night: Kane gets a performance evaluation despite being creepy. Thankfully this was mostly done off screen so we didn’t have to go through a bunch of lame and unfunny comedy. The closest thing was Kane giving Seth the head of his statue back in a good bit. Kane was eventually declared competent and Rollins whined a lot, eventually Pillmanizing Kane’s injured ankle.
Corporate Kane would be taken to an ambulance but Demon Kane came back out and destroyed Rollins. I’m not loving this idea but at least it’s something different. Also, they have to do Kane vs. Rollins at some point so why not do it on a show where they know the main event is going to carry everything else?
Big Show squashed Mark Henry to set up Saturday. Short and harmless. Well except to Henry.
One of the big segments of the night was Team PCB on MizTV. This is where I really started losing interest in the show. Paige came out and it turned into this big whining fest between the three of them plus Team Bella about who started the Divas Revolution. This felt like WWE was copying the Kardashians or some Real Housewives show with all the whining and cattiness.
Aside from trying to find a reason to care about who started this Revolution, this made every person involved in this story look like they were about 17 years old. It’s a bunch of whining and people sounding stupid as the title is forgotten again. I don’t want to see the division going in this direction, but unfortunately this is the kind of “entertainment” that dominates pop culture these days and it’s likely going to be more prominent in this division going forward.
Oh and Team PCB reformed for a match but Paige walked out, allowing Nikki to pin Charlotte for the title. Charlotte’s reign as champion is making Rollins look great by comparison.
The Wyatts squashed the Prime Time Players. This was fine.
King Barrett beat up Neville and Stardust. I’m glad he’s back but I don’t buy for a second that Barrett is going anywhere.
Bray Wyatt babbled a lot.
Randy Orton squashed Bo Dallas.
Ryback started a fight to break up Rusev vs. Kevin Owens in less than a minute. Dolph Ziggler ran out to superkick Ryback.
Let’s look at this set of segments for a bit. There was maybe ten minutes spent on these, but I’m not sure if I like that or not. The matches being short helps as there’s no reason to have something like Orton vs. Dallas go anywhere, but it’s kind of hard to care about matches that don’t get any time and everything goes flying by. It felt like they were trying to fill time and I can’t stand it when a show feels like it’s there for no reason. I can see both sides of this, but I’d really like something with more depth to it than what we got here.
Heyman came out to talk about Big Show vs. Brock so Big Show came out and scared him. No one with a brain who has seen five minutes of WWE believes Show has a chance here and it’s really annoying to have to sit through all these promos and matches building up what is going to be one sided.
The main event was a big brawl between Bray Wyatt vs. Roman Reigns. This was barely a match and that’s exactly what it should have been. They fought into the crowd and the highlight was the aftermath with Bray picking up a PERSON and throwing him at Reigns. Reigns speared Wyatt through a table to end the show in a brawl clearly designed to set up a match inside the Cell. Nothing wrong with that. Again though, Bray threw a PERSON at Reigns. That’s awesome on a whole different level.
Raw was……yeah this week. It feels like they’re spending more time setting up the house show on Saturday than the pay per view, which made for some uneven moments tonight. There are parts of it that I liked but at the same time it still feels like they’re searching for their next idea instead of knowing where they want to go and that’s never a good thing. Things should change a lot next week with the MSG show out of the way, but they should have already started some more of the build towards the pay per view.
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