WWE RAW Discussion Thread 2019

[Kam 243]

It feels like they've started to revert to 'attitude era' type shows with the increase in violence and martial shenanigans :p

 

I didn't need to see Lashey and Lana in bed! I like Rusev but I hate this storyline.

 

Have they given up on Lacey then? I can't remember the last time they booked Natalya this strong. Nice spot at the end although I thought it was funny when the other commentators were trying to get King to move out the way but he just stayed there :)

 

I think I'm loving Asuka and Sane even more now!

 

Fury/Strowman was OK - like I said in the HIAC thread, I'm not that fussed about either of them.

 

I guess they didn't want to risk Seth or The Fiend appearing incase they got some heat from the fans.

[Zack T 171]

That ending had all the same elements as Tyson/Austin, except it went further and got physical. And yet, it wasn't as exciting as they wanted. It was cool to see, but the dialogue was just blah because people just don't talk that way to each other. It came across as too scripted, and that sucked any sense of realism out of it.

 

Earlier in the night it was even more apparent when Rey had his interview and it was so easy to tell his promo was 100% scripted, word for word. I HATE THAT, because they write these things in such a way that it doesn't sound true to the talent. Also, it comes across poorly when the interviewer asks a question and the answer is either totally disconnected from the question, or essentially repeats the question and recaps stuff in such a way that you can tell the writers clearly didn't take into consideration that this is supposed to be a freakin conversation, not a monologue. I understand Rey has never been a great talker and he probably could use promo scripts, but man for folks like that, less is more. Keep it short, keep it simple. Rey absolutely DID NOT need to be talking for 7 or 8 minutes, however long it was. It came across as rigid and forced.

 

Otherwise, pretty boring show overall. It doesn't make much sense why NOW all of a sudden they want to play the "Can they get along?" angle with Charlotte and Becky. Seems like something they should've hammered on in the last couple of weeks, instead of now after they've possibly gotten past Bayley and Sasha and won't be teaming up anymore after tonight (or maybe 1 more time on Smackdown or Raw next week). Plus, they've literally already successfully teamed without imploding so...yea? They can co-exist? Why are we questioning it?

 

Brazzers tweeted WWE after HIAC that they'd be willing to help them craft coherent and logical storylines that have satisfactory endings and maybe WWE should take them on that offer. Jesus christ.

 

Ultimately I don't expect a ton of change with the draft, otherwise they wouldn't have started several stories/continued several stories. I'm intrigued by the Rusev/Lashley/Lana story, if only because I hold hope Rusev will come out on top. Having him destroy Randy in a rage after seeing Lashley in bed with Lana is promising.

[Kam 243]

I thought the show started off okay...with Becky/Charlotte, I also enjoyed the tag match and Andrade and Ali was good too.

 

Didn't care for much else.

 

It doesn't look like many people in the audience care about Strowman/Fury - I can see it's getting lots of mainstream press attention (which is obviously what WWE wants)...but it doesn't seem to be bringing much excitement to the show.

 

The crowd were absolutely dead for Natalya/Evans vs Asuka/Sane!

 

I don't get why they're still continuing The Fiend/Rollins feud if they're going to be on separate shows. I'm not sure if WWE was expecting fans to boo Rollins during the attack, although attacking Wyatt from behind was not very babyface like.

 

Humberto Carillo and Jinder Mahal got drafted before Samoa Joe :p Cesaro didn't even get picked! Raw seems very women heavy with Smackdown having more tag-teams.

[Zack T 171]

Cause they're overscripting Tyson and Braun. I'm not familiar with the world of boxing so I truthfully didn't even know who Tyson Fury was before he was on Smackdown. Once they said his credentials, I figured he'd be a big deal to folks that care about boxing, but I don't know if that translates to a WWE audience like maybe it did when it was Mike Tyson. But beyond that, the dialogue is just so terribly bad. It was so obvious that both Tyson and Strowman were reciting lines given to them by script writers. Even though they did somewhat acceptable deliveries of these lines, the words were just so immature and stupid that it wasn't believable. I mean honestly, who's gonna get so hyped up and mad that you BREAK A TABLE WITH YOUR BARE HANDS when THE BOXER YOU'RE SCHEDULED TO FIGHT says he's going to knock you out? For starters, that's such a generic and boring statement to make and secondly, come on man. That's to be expected. But Tyson saying "I'm gonna step into your world and I'm going to knock you out" or Braun saying "I'M GOING TO PICK YOU UP AND SLAM YOU TO THE MAT AND YOU KNOW THE FUNNY PART? HAHA, YOU CAN'T DO DAMN THING ABOUT IT" is just so abysmally dry, it sounds like a little kid wrote it for their creative writing class.

 

I also am not a fan of Braun in this spot because it feels very much like he's being relegated to being the new Big Show. How many times has Big Show been forced to lose high profile matches to celebrities and sports figures because he's a giant and it looks impressive for the guest to beat him? Braun doesn't need that type of treatment. At least Big Show had already accomplished multiple world and other title wins by the time he was put in that role, Braun's been a 2 time tag champ and neither reign lasted hardly any length of time, plus he's a failed money in the bank cash-in. It's too early to be screwing him up like this.

 

Charlotte and Becky had a weird start with the talking segment, I honestly expected Charlotte to win so that Smackdown could get the first draft pick on Raw like Raw got the first draft pick on Smackdown, but nope, Raw gets to go first again. Ok...?

 

The drafts got so bad as the night went on. I mean a lot of it wasn't that important anyway, due to everyone being so confused as to what show people are supposed to be on anyway because the wild card rule screwed everything up. But a lot of folks stayed put anyway. The only significant roster changes are Braun, Sasha, Bray moving to Smackdown and Charlotte, Erick Rowan, Randy Orton, and Aleister Black moving to Raw. They're not the only people who moved shows, but most of the others aren't on TV much anyway (like Shelton, Cesaro, AoP, etc). But later on, drafting people like Titus O'Neil, Liv Morgan, Akira Tozawa, Humberto Carrillo...yea, that's real thrilling stuff. And they already approached the draft in a way that a lot of folks didn't like anyway - just having Stephanie come out and read names wasn't very exciting. I personally thought it was a real sports-league feel for the draft, that's how I imagine other sports hold draft ceremonies (But I don't know for sure because I've literally never watched a draft for any sport, ever), but unfortunately it just had no oomph behind it.

 

But it was a means to an end, and now we're here. Rosters are set up, some people got forgotten about like the Usos/Naomi and Sheamus, so who knows what'll happen to them. Also pisses me off that they drafted Alexa and Nikki to Raw as individuals, then later traded them to Smackdown as a team without telling us who Raw gets in return. That trade was done on the new FS1 WWE show, Backstage. It was the "blockbuster trade" that the Fox sports broadcasters and WWE Commentators had been teasing us with since Smackdown. ....Well done...what a "blockbuster trade". Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross for...no one?

 

I think Sheamus may end up in NXT, I kind of hope he does. The Usos/Naomi apparently just don't have any plans right now so they weren't even drafted, not even in the free agent stuff after both shows. It's possible they go to NXT too, wouldn't hurt to have another strong team in that tag division there.

 

Buddy Murphy was fortunate that he actually got to debut on his draft night on Raw instead of getting drafted prominently like earlier in the year and then not getting to debut until he was accidentally in the background of the Roman/Bryan/Rowan angle. Sucks it was at Cedric's expense though, wrong guy to use in this case.

 

I also don't know what the hell they're thinking doing Bray and Seth AGAIN at Crown Jewel. For starters, they put Seth on Team Hogan so they booked him to do double duty for some reason. Word is that Seth will be replaced in that match and only fight the Fiend, but still why even put him there to begin with? My guess is they either hadn't decided to do Seth/Bray at Crown Jewel yet, or they knew all along and thought that this switcharoo would actually be a good idea. Spoiler: it's not. Don't book people for stuff you know you're gonna change, makes you look stupid.

 

Beyond that, doing Fiend/Seth again at this point is asking for more trouble. They MIGHT get away with a BS finish because they'll be in front of the Saudi crowd and they're gonna likely be much kinder than normal crowds would be, but unless they do a REAL "blockbuster trade" and move Brock back to Raw (or move Cain to Raw if he beats Brock), The Fiend just ain't gonna walk out with the title yet again. It's a falls count anywhere match so they're setting themselves up to do yet another BS no contest type of finish because there's no DQ and no count out, OR they're gonna squander the Fiend and actually let him take a pin. Neither option is any good.

 

So I dunno what's gonna happen at Crown Jewel with the Fiend and Seth Rollins, but it doesn't bode well.

[Kam 243]

Pretty meh Raw again.

 

It started off good, McIntyre/Ricochet had a decent match.

 

I'm not that fussed with Rusev/Lashley.

 

It seemed like most of the crowd had the same reaction as me during the Velasquez/Benjamin segment :sleep:

 

Humberto Carrillo had a great night - he did well considering this would have been the first time many of the fans would have seen him. My only concern is that he'll be treated the same way as Murphy/Ali (moreso Murphy) where they might have moments to shine but they could be squashed the next week.

 

The Street Profits looked like a big deal...considering how dead the crowd was during most of the show, credit to them for waking them up. Nice touch being the main event also.

 

However, my fav thing from the night was when I saw this on Twitter :D

 

https://twitter.com/username/status/1186745240931262467

[Zack T 171]

Commentary at the beginning during the Kabuki Warriors stuff was abysmal. First Dio is talking about "WHAT IS THAT GREEN MIST? WE HAVE NO IDEA WHERE IT COMES FROM!" and then after the commercial break, King asks where it comes from and Dio is like "I CAN TELL YOU THAT! IT'S A NINJIT..NINJIS, NINJITSU TRADITION DATING BACK HUNDREDS OF YEARS!" and then King starts talking about "OH YEA, we used to see that from another famed Japanese wrestler, the Kabuki Warrior!" - WHO? DO YOU MEAN THE GREAT KABUKI? I admit, I had to look that up cause I didn't even think there was a wrestler named Kabuki Warrior and there really isn't. It is true he's the one who originated the mist, but I dunno why King didn't bring up Tajiri instead...you know, a name people might actually be familiar with instead of some misnamed bs.

 

The Street Profits coming out and just talking pissed me off, so pointless. Every week, "WE WANT THE SMOKE!" - BOOK THEM IN MATCHES DAMN IT, jesus christ. I'm surprised they're over at all with how terrible their segments are, but I guess the masses are easy to please, otherwise WWE would be out of business.

 

And now in a terrible ass backstage segment, Humberto's gonna fight AJ. That was a word for word written promo with how generic and bland the words were, plus AJ barely put anything into it. Fuckin last week, they let the OC go free and they had a wonderful little backstage promo. STOP SCRIPTING THEM, they know how to talk! - Anyway, I'm not really a fan of debuting wrestlers against champions just to have them lose, but "put on a great effort!". I mean, they can look good in defeat but wins would help more than random losses, usually...unless they go out there and have a 4 or 5 star match. But even if they did, they probably wouldn't do much more with Humberto than they already have planned. If they even have much planned.

 

The Humberto situation really ticks me off. If they wanted to keep on doing this "Lose in a fantastic effort to the champion" method of getting him over this week, they could've done better. Not letting him speak backstage doesn't help, and they had so many options to make him lose in a way that doesn't make him look bad. I mean they had the OC at freakin ringside, interference was RIGHT THERE but they didn't use it. AJ could've cheated, but he didn't. Instead, they have AJ just flat out beat Humberto AND make him tap out instantly in the process, not even letting him struggle to get to the ropes. They could've had AJ win with a quick roll up, or using the ropes for leverage, or raking the eyes, but nope, nothing. He just loses. Yea that'll help Humberto get over, let both Seth and AJ kick out of what I assume is his finisher in the big moonsault, then make AJ tap him out real quick after not even working on the leg til the very last move of the match. Good plan.

 

Then they try to have him show heart and a "Won't back down" attitude after the match, but the crowd didn't even care because he just tapped out, and he got beat down some more afterwards.

 

That's not how you build a new star, that's how you establish AJ Styles as a dominant champion. But who knows, maybe that was the point instead.

 

Honestly I love the way Rusev talks, and some of that stuff made sense. If it hadn't involved Bobby and Lana seemingly having sex everywhere and then Lana complaining about Rusev wanting too much sex, it'd have been fine. Lana's speech about modeling and stuff was quite logical, honestly. But it doesn't make much sense to go on a sex craze if the guy you're leaving wanted too much sex. Kind've loose reasoning too that she randomly believes Bobby Lashley telling her Rusev was cheating on her (HE'S TALKING S**T) but it's wrestling so I'll forgive that one I guess.

 

Lots of low blows.

 

Anyone else think Rusev looks like muscular Freddie Mercury?

[Kam 243]

I actually quite enjoyed it this week.

 

Nice start with Paige...now that the Kabuki Warriors are heels it makes sense to ditch Paige. I love the new attire by Kairi - much better than the pirate stuff. They just need to update the mashup music, I hate Kairi's one, it doesn't seem to gel well with Asuka's. The match was good, finally Asuka and Kairi seem to be getting some momentum again.

 

Commentary at the beginning during the Kabuki Warriors stuff was abysmal. First Dio is talking about "WHAT IS THAT GREEN MIST? WE HAVE NO IDEA WHERE IT COMES FROM!" and then after the commercial break, King asks where it comes from and Dio is like "I CAN TELL YOU THAT! IT'S A NINJIT..NINJIS, NINJITSU TRADITION DATING BACK HUNDREDS OF YEARS!" and then King starts talking about "OH YEA, we used to see that from another famed Japanese wrestler, the Kabuki Warrior!" - WHO? DO YOU MEAN THE GREAT KABUKI?

I noticed that too! When Dio started talking about Ninjit...I thought it must have been one of the others who said they didn't know where the mist comes from :lol:

 

YAY! Buddy Murphy :love: I thought putting him against R-Truth was a good idea, although I don't think he got to show much of what he's capable of. Murphy's match with Daniel Bryan on Smackdown was great...he needs something like that again and then given the opportunity to build on it.

 

The Street Profits coming out and just talking pissed me off, so pointless. Every week, "WE WANT THE SMOKE!" - BOOK THEM IN MATCHES DAMN IT, jesus christ. I'm surprised they're over at all with how terrible their segments are, but I guess the masses are easy to please, otherwise WWE would be out of business.

The crowd didn't seem that interested in them, they were more vocal later on but as you said, this was just silly.

 

Ricochet/McIntyre was good, loved the ending with Orton too.

 

I'm surprised they didn't give The IIconics any mic time.

 

I liked what they did with Humberto Carrillo last week...I don't see why they needed to do the same thing again this week. I thought he'd face someone he'd actually defeat :) Last week Owens made the save, this week it was The Street Profits. I don't think there was any mention of Owens.

 

When did Lana lose her accent? I think that's the first time I can remember her talking normally...rather than using that fake Russian accent. As much as I don't like the feud, the crowd did seem to be enjoying it, especially that brawl at the end.

[Zack T 171]

Street Profits mentioned KO in their promo, but yea otherwise he was no where to be found. That's pretty dumb in itself.

 

Lana lost her accent basically ever since she went on Total Diva's. She wasn't on Raw/Smackdown for the longest time though, and I believe she was still using it before her and Rusev disappeared from TV. But now it's just gone, no reason given. But it's been so long, it's whatever at this point.

 

The brawl at the end was good, but Lana's speech (while it had it's moments) was incoherent and illogical. Changed her reason up 3 times as to why she was doing this, and the only one that really made any sense was her not wanting a baby yet. Everything else was so stupid it was insulting.

 

Buddy Murphy getting a win was good, but his pre-match promo was bland and he got overshadowed by the 24/7 title shenanigans that it'd be easy to forget he even won the match.

 

Randy swooping in with the RKO at the end of Ricochet/Drew was quite good, didn't see that coming. Not really a fan of Ricochet being fed to Drew 2 weeks in a row, but I am a fan of Drew finally getting a bigger push and actually winning some matches. You'd think he'd have been more successful than he has been, but look at his win/loss record this year and he's actually lost way more than you'd expect. I think possibly even more than he's won. He kept losing to Roman, and he kept losing tag team matches. Oftentimes he wasn't the one pinned, but sometimes he was. Heck he'd even lose random weird matches on Raw, like to Ricochet right before Drew took some time off pre-summerslam to heal an injury. Hopefully he'll be back on track now. Loved him getting in the face of Hogan.

Edited October 30, 2019 by Zack T

[Kam 243]

I'm definitely liking Drew more on Raw than I did in NXT. As you've said I'm surprised they've not pushed him as much as I thought they would.

[Kam 243]

Some random notes from this week's show:

 

I laughed at the thought of Seth telling the roster to be better when he's not even the champ :)

 

Matt Hardy looked great in the retro attire.

 

I worry for Murphy, I'm not sure why they're giving him to Black rather than someone else. Murphy deserves a decent push but it doesn't look like he's going to get it. I can't see anything other than Black beating him.

 

The 4-way match was good and Rey was awesome once again. I wasn't expecting him to win the title so that was a nice surprise.

 

Charlotte/Asuka felt like it went on forever, it was alright but I hate that it took Sane's interference and the mist for Asuka to defeat her. I know she's a heel...but I still get annoyed seeing Asuka's downfall since the NXT reign. The current run with Sane has so much potential, I hope WWE can get behind it.

 

So...AOP to be Seth's new backup?