BRM Reviews the 3/16/2020 Raw (TERRIBLE!)

[Big Red Machine]

EDGE INTERRUPTS THE ANNOUNCERS INTRODUCING THE SHOW- fine
He cut a promo challenging Orton to a Last Man Standing match at Mania. His promo had great emotion and many of the ideas were good, but I REALLY didn’t like the line about Orton not having learned “grit.” The man is a pro wrestler who has taken tons of bumps (including into thumbtacks) and come back from several injuries. Are you really going to tell me that he doesn’t know “grit.”

THE ENTIRE 2020 MEN’S ROYAL RUMBLE MATCH AIRED, WITH COMMERCIAL BREAKS- Well… that’s one way to kill half of the show.
And, yes, it does get over Drew vs. Brock, so it did serve a purpose, but it was just REALLY long.

AJ STYLES/UNDERTAKER CONTRACT SIGNING- bad
Taker is all business; no cool Taker entrance. He flipped the table over, and I couldn’t help but notice that this contract signing is missing the contract, which seems like a key component. Instead we get a commercial, then a long video package, then the OC showing up on the TitanTron with AJ holding the contract in his hands. AJ cuts a promo saying it’s ridiculous that Taker “interjects himself” into WrestleMania season when Michael Jordan doesn’t interject himself into the NBA finals.
He also called The Undertaker a mark. From the context, I’ll assume that AJ means that Taker is a mark for his wife and thus wrestles at WrestleMania to make money for her. That’s definitely why he said that, and not because we’re going in a Vince Russo shoot names direction. Yeah. That’s what I’ll keep telling myself. Way too much of AJ’s promo was also a repeat of things he said last week, meaning that it served no narrative purpose and just came off as filling time.
AJ signed the contract, and we then got comedy from the OC, as none of them wanted to be the one to take the contract to Taker. AJ eventually ordered Anderson & Gallows to go together. They slide the contract into the ring because they’re afraid. Taker magically teleports behind them and then beats them up when they turn around. I wonder if the gong sound is something Taker can control or it’s just a side effect of whatever magic spell or mutant power he uses. Like, if he were in a room that was already dark and decided to teleport, would there need to be a gong sound to tip his opponent off that he had teleported?
Anyway, Taker signed the contract, then stuffed it in Anderson’s mouth. I found absolutely none of this to be interesting in any way. And with that bad contract signing out of the way we’re getting one between Goldberg and Roman on Smackdown.

REY MYSTERIO JR. vs. ANDRADE “CIEN” ALMAS (w/Zelina Vega)- 5/10
For absolutely no reason that I can discern, Asuka is on commentary for this match. The reality is that they probably put her out there just to rant in Japanese all match, which is not a good reason at all.
Rey won in about seven minutes, a good chunk of which took place during a commercial. I guess this sets up a title match for WrestleMania, but having Rey win this match so decisively makes it feel like he has already gotten his revenge on Andrade, so I don’t really care too much about the Mania match.

BECKY LYNCH SHOWS UP DRIVING A BIG TRAILER CAB PAINTED UP WTH FLAMES AND WITH HER NICKNAMES AND FACE ON IT- Then, for no reason other than to make noise, she honked the horn like an asshole. Actually, just driving this thing made her come off like an asshole. If you’re going to get a trailer cab, at least do some f*cking work and pull something with it.
And those f*cking flames. They’re not cool. They’re this:


BECKY LYNCH PROMO- HATED IT!
Whether Baszler is a bully or not (and she is), Becky is coming off like a complete and total narcissist here. With ZERO evidence in anything Shayna has said, Becky has invented this reality where she is the sole focus of Shayna’s existence and anything and everything that Shayna does MUST be because Becky is so damn great.
Baszler was shown watching backstage with an odd look on her face. I guess she was supposed to be disturbed or angry, but to me it looked like she had a really bad stomach ache.

CHARLY CARUSO INTERVIEWS KEVIN OWENS- ABSOLUTELY F*CKING ATROCIOUS!
Owens is asked if he will accept Rollins’ challenge to a match and when he wants it to happen. He says that now that Mania has been moved to the Performance Center, he wants to have the match then. His reasoning was as follows:
Every other time they’ve faced off, Seth has had the advantage because of his friends, but if they have the match in the PC, Owens thinks he’ll have the “homefield advantage” because Owens spent time there and Seth didn’t.
Oh my G-d where to start?
1. How does having the match at the PC prevent Buddy Murphy & AOP from interfering? Did I miss a storyline where those guys were banned from the Performance Center?
2. Owens has had his own crew for a while, now, too, and even with Samoa Joe’s various injuries (both kayfabe and not), Owens’ crew of the Viking Raiders and Street Profits actually outnumbers Seth’s five to four.
3. The concept of “homefield advantage” is derived from two things. First is the idea that the fans in the building will be encouraging you with their cheers, giving you extra moral support, or, if you’re the road team, that the fans will be jeering you and disrupting your concentration. If there aren’t going to be any fans there, then this point is moot.
The other is some particular knowledge of that particular field of play. For example, maybe the puck bounces a little more off of certain parts of the boards, or being more used to fielding balls take that bounce off of both walls in the that funny corner thing in center field in Fenway Park. For that to apply in this case (maybe the ropes aren’t as springy in a certain ring), Owens would need to know exactly which ring the match will take place in, and it also assumes that said ring hasn’t been changed or replaced in the more than four years since Owens has been at the PC on a regular basis.

The thing that is most frustrating about this is that I’m 100% certain I know why they’re pushing it this way, which is as follows: They realize that they’re going to be stuck at the PC for a while and likely without any fans, so they’re trying to turn this building into something special. A sort of ECW Arena to NXT’s ECW (and I think the ECW comparison is quite apt, for reasons I’ll go into in a moment). They want a label they can stick on things that will lend it a sort of credibility, regardless of whether the thing itself is actually good (because for all of the great moments that have happened in famous wrestling Meccas like Arena Mexico, MSG, the Omni, the Cow Palace, and Korakuen Hall, they’ve all indisputably seen a large amount of stinkers as well). And because they’re WWE, the only way they know how to tell us that something is special is to push it over and over again to ridiculous degrees and shoehorn it into things, no matter how little sense it makes. “WWE Performance Center” is going to become the new Divas’/Women’s R/Evolution.

To circle back to the NXT-ECW comparison, I definitely see them trying to turn the PC/NXT into this ECW-like idea. Not ECW the actual promotion, but rather the historiographical version of ECW they created for themselves (with the help of many willing accomplices from both ECW fandom and ECW itself) with The Rise and Fall of ECW, where it was 99% great and magical and it was all teamwork and friendship in the locker room. Owens pushed the friendship and mentorship buttons pretty hard here, and others have done so recently as well, and I don’t think that’s an accident. As for what they think they’re getting by doing this, I see three goals:
1. As described above, try to make these empty arena shows feel like they’re special and important and that there is some other reason to do these shows from the PC other than the current pandemic.
2. To drive Raw and SD-only viewers to NXT to help boost its ratings (especially against AEW, but they’re tried short-term fixes with a third-brand before, and this could just be a more refined, long-term version of that strategy that they would have resorted to anyway).
3. To coopt the positives of the NXT label to apply them in places where they don’t belong (say, Baron Corbin), or to use it as a band-aid in places where NXT succeeded that the main roster has failed (Ricochet, Gable, Roode, Lacey Evans, Sonya Deville, Apollo Crews) to try to absolve themselves of their own failures by using this label to make those people seem bigger than they have been portrayed or bigger than their ability, depending on the case. Because in putting over the PC, they’re removing two key elements from NXT: the booking, and the fans (and ignoring how much of the talent that has come through there was already polished the moment they set foot in the door). Because those are two things that WWE won’t ever have without some DRASTIC changes, that at this point I think we all agree won’t happen until Vince McMahon dies.


STEVEN AUSTIN SEGMENT- TERRIBLE!
Austin cuts a promo that, while fun, didn’t really serve any purpose. Then he invited Byron Saxton into the ring to have a beer with him. Then, for no f*cking reason, Austin gave Byron a stunner. WHAT A DICK! Is it that hard to have some undercard heel come out and take a swing at Austin, so the person taking the stunner actually deserves it instead of being the victim of workplace bullying?
Then Becky Lynch came out to join in, because we’ve got to shoe-horn her into this. More beer was poured on poor Byron, then he ate another stunner. Becky Lynch was an eager participant in this, so she’s also a dick. And she had the nerve to criticize Shayna Baszler for being a bully?


This was an absolutely DREADFUL show. Yes, I know that these circumstances are almost unprecedented, but there has to be a better way. Seven minutes of new wrestling on a three-hour show (and half of it during commercial) is just plain not okay. Or at least use matches that many people haven’t seen yet and been shown replays of over and over. Why not show some of the best of 205 Live (added some canned cheers to the tape if you really want to) and then, when sh*t gets better, you can run with someone like Gulak or Ali or Cedric or Murphy and people will actually give a sh*t.
It wasn’t just the wrestling on this show, either. Pretty much everything they did to build to WrestleMania tonight SUCKED. Becky has become more and more unlikable by the week, this AJ vs. Taker angle is being overproduced to hell (no pun intended), and I already ran down how much I hated the Owens vs. Rollins build. This isn’t an issue that it’s fair to pin on this particular show, but if we’re going to get more and more promos like these, then it’s just going to get worse and worse. They need to come up with more creative ways to get their angles over, giving the limitations that are currently in place. This is a company with access to Paul Heyman, Gabe Sapolsky, Ryan Ward, and Triple H. Stick them in a room together and have them figure something out. But whatever comes out of it needs to be a hell of a lot better than this.