In continuing to celebrate the Thanksgiving week festivities, I am continuing my coverage of wrestling bit by bit. To that effect, I've decided to go ahead and share my Raw thoughts in a separate post today.
Raw Thoughts- 11/19/18
- The show opened up with Baron Corbin and Stephanie McMahon gloating over Raw's clean sweep of SmackDown Live at Survivor Series. Then both Corbin and Braun Strowman demanded that Stephanie honor her statements before Survivor Series. Thus, Strowman gets Baron Corbin at TLC. If Strowman wins, he gets his match against Brock Lesnar for the Universal Championship at the Royal Rumble. If Corbin wins, he becomes the permanent General Manager of Raw. Braun gets to pick the stipulation, which he chooses to be a TLC match.
The whole segment set up the upcoming PPV and addressed some stuff that came up in the previous two weeks. I'm glad they spent the time to do that. But what happens next is something I wasn't a fan of. The six man tag between Corbin, Lashley, and McIntyre vs. Strowman, Finn Balor, and Elias. Here are my list of problems:
1) WHAT THE HELL ARE THEY DOING WITH FINN BALOR? Just who did he piss off to become Raw's Barry Horowitz? He's a jobber to the stars at this point, and it's sad to see. They need to do better by Finn in the future. I'm not saying he needs to be hotshotted to main event level. I mean, he's not Jinder Mahal after all. Right Vince?
2) It was way too long. The entire match/segment (if you include the preceding promo) took 50 minutes with a bunch of rest holds and yawn-inducing drama. I'm not interested in seeing Corbin, Lashley, and McIntyre in a new stable or alliance. We just got through another failed attempt to do stable warfare.
3) Another Survivor Series match? Really? Really? And you eliminate Finn first on his team... again.
As far as the injury angle with Strowman, I don't have much of an issue with it. They needed to do something to give Corbin an advantage and get some sympathy on Braun Strowman heading into the match.
To wrap this part of the review up, I have a bold prediction: Baron Corbin is going to win when LARS SULLIVAN interferes and takes out Braun Strowman at TLC. I don't think Vince sees Braun as a main-eventer like the fans do, and I see him using Braun to elevate the new guy to the Raw roster, Lars Sullivan. Sullivan will be Corbin's unofficial hitman on Raw that Strowman (and Angle) will have to deal with. Meanwhile, Vince is going to give WrestleMania's title shot against Brock Lesnar to Drew McIntyre who will either win the Rumble or the Elimination Chamber the following month.
- I'm glad to see that the women's division dominated a lot of the TV time on Raw this week. In fact, the women provided a lot of the more entertaining moments on the show. While I'm beyond tired of the way Bayley has been booked over the last few months, I am glad they are doing something with what Nia Jax did last week by accident. If she's going to have heat, and you aren't going to reprimand her for the accident, you've got to tap into that anger from the fan base. And WWE has done a good job with that over the last two shows.
I also liked what Ronda Rousey did on this show in addressing the attack by Charlotte Flair and demanding to fight. Although the match with Mickie James never threatened the title reign, it did paint Rousey as a fighting champion whether you like or hate her. The big story coming out of this is her match with Nia Jax at TLC and her continued desire to get back at Charlotte Flair. Now, the big question is where does The Man fit in? Where does Becky Lynch work into all of this? Triple Threat? TRIPLE THREAT!
Then we got a continuation of the feud between Natalya and Ruby Riott/Riott Squad. So much for Natalya getting any help in this feud. But she fought off the Squad and snuck in a roll-up for the victory on Riott. I have been a fan of this rivalry since the sunglasses became a part of the feud. Anyone that has lost someone dear and feels a deep connection to any relic of that person can identify with that story.
- The less said about the forced humor involving the Drake Maverick soiling himself, the better. And sadly for AOP, they still did the J.O.B. at the end. So, the AOP can defeat the SmackDown Tag Team Champions who have a 7' frigging giant in their corner. But they can't defeat Chad Gable and Bobby Roode? Really? REALLY?!
- I am not a fan of the Lucha House Party in gimmick or in performance. They can flip! YEAH! Their matches mean jack squat, and they produce more botches than a politician in a lie detector test.
- The running conflict of Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins didn't get to me for a big reason: The continued use of Roman Reigns' leukemia. When Dean said that line, I didn't react in a way that WWE probably wanted me to react. Instead, I reacted like a normal human should: "Those jerks." This is beyond reprehensible at this point. It's downright disgusting. WWE is trying to garner sympathy for a work by using someone's real-life-or-death struggle to garner that attention. While others are pointing out the Stephanie comment about dismemberment as being the "social justice" outrage, this deserves more attention and outrage. I'm not seeing enough of that on the media today as it is the latest of several weeks' worth of using that diagnosis to gain a few more bucks.
I'm also ready to say that Dean Ambrose's heel turn has been a bust so far. I was more interested when he said nothing than when he actually started talking and was just regular Dean, just angry and heelish. And someone that is sinking low to use Roman's leukemia diagnosis to get some cheap, cheap, cheap heat. I mean Dean was so desperate for boos that he had to resort to putting down the local town. That's something I would expect from Elias or Lio Rush or Baron Corbin. Dean used to strike me as a character that wouldn't care where he was at nor a performer that would have to stoop that low to get some attention. I hope they do something to change the direction of this character. Because, right now, this is a bust.
Overall, this was a mixed bag edition of Raw. There were a lot of things I liked which mostly involved the women on this show. BUT there was a lot about this show that I just did not care about. Raw had been doing well the last few weeks, but this was a step in the wrong direction.
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Until next time, take care of yourselves. Spread some awesomeness.
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