BRM Reviews the 6/10/2019 Raw (dreadful)

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews the 6/10/2019 Raw (dreadful)

Post by Big Red Machine » Jun 11th, '19, 15:51

OPENING SEGMENT- boring
Seth Rollins comes out to brag about beating up Brock Lesnar. Seth felt oddly heelish here. I think it’s just his voice. He was interrupted by Baron Corbin, who said he would win the title from Seth at Stomping Grounds. He also reveals that he has negotiated to be able to choose a special guest referee for the match. One can only assume this was negotiated with some number of McMahons and we haven’t heard the others put up a stink about it so I guess Hunter and Steph are also heels... but we’re not supposed to think about that.
Corbin reveals that Sami Zayn will be his special guest referee. Sami comes out and cuts a dull promo on Seth, saying his usual crap. All his promo did was serve to remind me that this Brock Lesnar sh*t has gone on for far too long. Rollins tricks Sami into admitting that there is some quid pro quo going on with him and Corbin. Seth wants to know who will protect Sami “when I come up there and slap the taste out of your mouth.” I thought the answer to this question was pretty obvious: Baron Corbin. But instead Kevin Owens came out (wildcard #1). Words were exchanged, and Seth and Owens booked themselves in the main event because apparently we went on the air with no main event scheduled.
That last bit was made even worse by Michael Cole’s subsequent announcement that a Raw Tag Team Title match had already been booked for tonight’s show. And then even worse again by the fact that it was one of only two matches they thought was enough of a draw to advertise to us at this moment, and the other was the Lars Sullivan vs. Lucha House Party rematch that was scheduled for next. So even on a show with no planned main event, they STILL won’t put the tag titles in the main event.
As if that wasn’t enough to let you know that these belts don’t matter, the title match in question will be a three-way between the champs (Hawkins & Ryder- I wouldn’t blame you for forgetting because they’re never on TV), the Usos, and The Revival. Not the Viking Raiders, who came up to the main roster and immediately scored multiple pins on the champs. The Usos and The Revival. The very same Usos and Revival who had a match at Friday’s supposedly-important Super Showdown WWE Network special in which the Usos won clean, both teams are being granted the exact same opportunity here tonight, just to rub it in that wins and losses don’t actually matter.
For more proof that wins and losses- and post-match brawls, too, apparently- don’t matter, we were shown Lars Sullivan warming up backstage as Michael Cole told us that Lars was “looking for revenge” on Lucha House Party for getting DQed in their match against him at Super Showdown. WHY? Lars not only won the match, but he won the post-match brawl, too! What does he need revenge for? According to Corey Graves, Lars is upset that he didn’t “take out” the Lucha House Party. I will admit that this is heelish and Lars is supposed to be a heel, but I also don’t think this is really the right track to be taking with him right now, especially in a feud against three minority wrestlers. Making matters worse, Cole’s framing of this- that Lucha House Party knew they were going to lose so they got DQed on purpose- made Lars look like a total babyface.


HANDICAP ELIMINATION MATCH: Lars Sullivan vs. Lucha House Party- DUD!
Lars killed them with basically one move each. The last guy (Gran Metalik) was down after one move but Lars kept pulling him up, then going to beat up his buddies on the outside. Lincé Dorado landed on his head taking a bump into the ringpost. He seemed to be okay because the referee didn’t rush out to check on him, but between Taker, Goldberg, Naito, Ibushi, and not this, I’m really getting worried that something bad is going to happen to someone very soon.

THE 24/7 TITLE GAGGLE GETS STUCK IN AN ELEVATOR-
Carmella is wildcard #2 for tonight. It has not yet been explained to us whether or not the 24/7 champion himself counts for the wildcard rule, so R-Truth might be #3 (a title being “open” to people from any brand is not the same as the champion being allowed to go wherever he/she wants, as was specifically stated with the Women’s Tag Team Titles). As a fellow claustrophobe, my sympathies go out to poor Cedric Alexander.
The key point of this segment is that while they (Truth, Carmella, Cedric, Drake Maverick, EC III, and Heath Slater) were trapped in the elevator, there was no referee present so the title couldn’t change hands. As others have pointed out, Heath Slater was, as we last saw, actually a referee and not a wrestler, so he could technically count the pin. That being said, before Kevin Owens made his return this winter, the last time we had seen him was as a member of the Raw roster but he was now on Smackdown without any explanation, so maybe Heath got reinstated off-screen.
Also, once again I feel that WWE has missed the humor of the premise of their 24/7 Title segment. A bunch of people stuck in an elevator with no referee isn’t funny. Funny is two wrestlers and a referee stuck in an elevator and the two wrestlers trying to pin each other in the extremely confined space of the elevator.

The Stomping Grounds PPV has its own tagline, which is “the Pay-Per-View event where it’s time to kick ass and take names.” Thank G-d we’ll only have to hear them say it over and over and over again for two weeks, not the usual four.

MICHAEL COLE’S SIT-DOWN INTERVIEW WITH BECKY LYNCH & LACEY EVANS- meh
They’re doing a split-screen gimmick with Cole remaining seated at the announcers’ desk, which makes you wonder why they can’t also patch Corey and Renee in to allow them to ask questions as well. Becky Lynch immediately points out that Lacey getting a title shot is utterly ridiculous because Becky beat Lacey clean at MITB. Their promos were good and they kept it short, but I am having a lot of trouble caring because of the problem of this being a totally undeserved title match.
The real culprit here is WWE’s adherence to the usual formula even when the formula doesn’t make sense given the situation. We need to have the Raw Women’s Champion on the PPV and if the champion is going to be on PPV it has to be a title match... even if the person we want to match her up against has no reason to be given a title shot and several reasons not to. And them being trapped in that line of thinking is a real shame, too, because imagine the following scenario:
Becky vs. Lacey is a non-title match instead, with Becky having demanded a match against Lacey to get revenge for Lacey interfering in her match with Charlotte at MITB and contributing to her losing the Smackdown Women’s Title.
Tonight we get a backstage segment with Nikki Cross telling Alexa she doesn’t know which team to root for tonight, so Alexa says things to try to get Nikki to be in her corner, and Nikki agrees. During the match Charlotte runs in for a hit-and-run DQ, attacking the babyfaces. She and Lacey beat the babyfaces down. Alexa is down on the outside so she doesn’t get involved, but Nikki does, running in to save her friend Becky. The announcers will comment on it seeming a little odd that Lacey and Charlotte are working together, given what we’ve seen over the past two weeks. Some similarly-strange instance of the two enemies coordinating with each other occurs next week as well, and Alexa, Nikki, and Bayley all have run-ins with the IIconics.
On the go-home Smackdown we get a segment where Alexa is pretty much full heel, cutting a scathing promo on Bayley and saying that she’ll make Bayley into the new Sasha Banks- someone who always loses her title in the first defense.
At the PPV they are wrestling a standard match with a moderate- but not too extreme- babyface/heel dynamic. Nikki Cross comes out to cheer on her friend Alexa, which distracts Bayley, and Alexa takes advantage and rolls Bayley up to win the title. The idea here would be that Nikki didn’t distract Bayley on purpose, and we’d get a good shot of Bayley giving her the stink eye, but not attacking her or anything like that. Renee or Cole can accuse Alexa of “using” Nikki and note that Alexa basically ignores Nikki’s efforts to celebrate with her, wanting the spotlight for herself, while Graves can insist that when a friendship is this deep, sometimes you don’t need to show gratitude because it is already understood.
Later in the night, Nikki comes down to cheer her other friend Becky on, too, which makes Lacey very worried, to the point where she demands that Nikki be ejected from ringside, using what happened earlier as evidence. The referee agrees and ejects Nikki from ringside... and mere minutes later, Charlotte interferes to help Lacey Evans beat Becky in their non-title match. They then beat Becky down after the match. Bayley comes out to make the save but she is fighting two on one... until Nikki Cross comes out. Things are looking up for the babyfaces but then the IIconics come out and attack them. The beat-down continues for a minute or so. Just enough time for the announcers to get over their initial outrage and begin to think analytically again, allowing Renee to point out that if Alexa was really Nikki’s friend she’s be out here trying to help her, like Nikki and Bayley did for Becky. About thirty seconds later Alexa comes out with a Kendo stick or some other ranged weapon to give her and advantage over the heels and takes it to them enough for the other babyfaces to recover and the heels get chased off.
The next night on Raw, Lacey Evans explains that after Becky attacked them both in the middle of their match on the 5/27 Raw they realized that they needed to work together, so they made a deal that Charlotte would do what she could to help Lacey win the Raw Women’s Title from Becky in exchange for the first title shot against her (which can happen due to the wildcard rule).
On the other side of the ledger we now have this dynamic over the next few weeks where Becky and Bayley don’t trust Alexa, Bayley is angry with Nikki although Nikki apologizes to her and just wants them all to be friends, and Alexa doesn’t give a crap about anyone else’s feelings. It’s not like she told Nikki to come out and cause a distraction. If Bayley got distracted then that’s Bayley’s fault, not hers, and not Nikki’s.
We spend a few weeks building to an eight-woman tag at Extreme Rules via various run-ins and attacks. On Raw things are relatively even without any wildcards showing up (we’ll assume that Becky was a special case of being both champions and that Alexa is allowed to appear on SD because she’s the SD champion while still being a member of the Raw roster), but on Smackdown the babyfaces have 3-on-2 disadvantage without anyone coming over via wildcard rule, and a seeming reluctance to come out and help Bayley on Alexa’s part isn’t making things any better. Also not making things any better is that Bayley keeps demanding a rematch from Alexa, telling her that if she is as moral and reformed as she claims to be then she should have no problem agreeing to a rematch and having Nikki Cross stay in the back. She has even spoken to Steph about having it in a cage so no one can interfere. This clearly makes Alexa nervous, and she keeps using “let’s focus on the eight-woman tag first” as an excuse to keep putting the match off.
Or maybe it’s not an excuse and Alexa really does want them to focus all of their attention on the eight-woman tag (which has been made a no DQs match by this point), as she keeps imploring Becky to do the same even though Becky keeps telling everyone that she has no problem scheduling her title defense against Lacey whenever Lacey wants it.
The babyfaces win the eight-woman no DQs match, with Nikki pinning one of the IIconics. From there on the Smackdown side of things Alexa comes out and tells Bayley that, as promised, they can have their title match now that they’ve gotten past the eight-woman tag... but unlike the cage Bayley had previously suggested, Alexa talked to Vince and instead had the idea to use Nikki on the outside, armed with a Kendo stick, to prevent interference by the IIconics, who are certainly going to be upset about losing at the PPV. Bayley starts to question this, but Alexa pointedly asks her how she could not trust Nikki after seeing how hard Nikki has fought at Bayley’s side over the past few weeks.
That is the main event for the first episode of SD after the PPV, and the big swerve is... that there is no swerve. Nikki prevents the IIconics from interfering and nothing more. Bayley beats Alexa cleanly, and Alexa shows Bayley respect after the match, completing her babyface turn. Alexa and Nikki will head to SummerSlam as your challengers for the tag titles.
On the Raw side of things, Lacey gets her title match on Raw and Charlotte shows up to try to help Lacey win, as promised, but Becky is able to maneuver things into a situation where Charlotte winds up getting Lacey disqualified with her interference (maybe Becky dives onto Charlotte and starts punching her so that Charlotte will have to punch back), which leads to Charlotte and Lacey once again starting to fight, and we wind up with a three-way at SummerSlam that Becky wins.
That ties up all of the loose ends by making everyone’s random interactions with the IIconics actually relevant, resolves the issue of Alexa seemingly being a babyface on Raw and a heel on SD by using Nikki to turn Alexa babyface and basically reveal that while her initial niceness was a ruse to fool Nikki into being her latest tool a la Mickie James and Nia Jax before her, Alexa actually started to see Nikki as a real friend and thus turned fully babyface, freshens Alexa up by making her a babyface for the first time in four years, and has everything actually make sense.
And if I wanted to go even deeper on this:
Mustafa Ali would lose an IC Title match at SummerSlam. Lacey and Charlotte would blame each other for their losses and keep cutting promos on each other the week after the show. They’d show up and brawl with each other on the second week’s Raw and then again on SD, leading to it being announced that because WWE is tired of wasting a wildcard rule spot on each show for one of them, Lacey Evans has been traded to Smackdown in exchange for Mustafa Ali (who will go on to form a tag team with his buddy Cedric Alexander) and Ember Moon. Charlotte and Lacey can feud for a month and then maybe get turned into a frenemies tag team that will win the titles from Nikki and Alexa between the September and October PPVs, then feud with Asuka & Kairi over them.
On Raw we’d build Tamina up for the September PPV or maybe do a babyface vs. babyface title feud between Nattie and Becky, but the real focus would be on Ember Moon. A trade of Lacey Evans for Mustafa Ali is clearly upper-midcarder for upper-midcarder, but Lacey is just coming off of a world title loss while Ali is coming off of a secondary title loss so SD needed to throw in a little more to make it fair, so Ember Moon was chosen.
This does not sit well with Ember Moon, who feels extremely slighted at being treated like a scrub. Now she has a chip on her shoulder, and one misplaced barb from Alicia Fox sets her off and she DESTROYS Alicia on the pre-show of the September PPV. The next person to make a wrong comment to her is Alexa Bliss!, who gets taken out on the undercard of the October PPV, or possibly the Raw before. The match is about 80-20 in Ember’s favor, with her offense getting more and more vicious. After the match she cuts a promo telling the WWE Universe that their “goddess” is no more and instead they have to deal with a War Goddess, and she is vengeful.
This leads to Ember feuding with Nikki Cross, leading to a no DQs match at this year’s Evolution, which hasn’t been announced yet, but there is certainly an opportune hole for it in the schedule in late October. Ember would win that match, and we’d build her up to take the belt from Becky Lynch in an absolute war in December, and now you’ve got a new top heel.

Back to the actual show:
The announcers then plugged Becky & Bayley vs. Alexa Bliss! & Lacey Evans for later on. Why didn’t you advertise that at the top of the show?

ALEXA BLISS! & NIKKI CROSS BACKSTAGE- odd
There is something there with the possibility of an Alexa Bliss! babyface turn, but they’re just SOOOO heavy-handed with how they have her lie that any bit of belief Nikki Cross has makes her look like an idiot, and makes Alexa look dumb by thinking she can get away with such an obvious lie. Also, does Nikki not understand that WWE management books the matches, not the wrestlers? Shouldn’t she be upset at them for changing the match, rather than thinking it was Alexa (and then later Bayley) who did it?

MIZTV WITH SPECIAL GUEST SAMOA JOE-
Miz says Joe “crossed a line” by involving Rey’s son and criticizes him for attacking Rey for no reason. Joe was a great heel. Miz and Joe had a face-off, but then Braun Strowman showed up because he wants a title shot. Lashley came out and said he wasn’t done with Braun, and that he wants a title shot, too.
Then Ricochet came out said “you guys are always out here about who’s bigger and who’s stronger. Obviously that’s not me.” Whoever wrote this should have been flogged upon turning it in. First of all, if you’re going to come out and have someone say “you guys are always saying X” you really should make sure that X has already been brought up in the conversation he is interrupting! Secondly, you don’t start advocating for yourself by pointing out your own flaws! Do you know how many of Pete Buttigieg’s campaign speeches start off along the lines of “I’me just the mayor of a medium-sized city in Indiana, so I don’t have the experience with national politics and making big-time decisions that all of these senators and congressional representatives and former cabinet members do, but...” It’s ZERO. Because that’d be a stupid thing to say! There was no reason for Ricochet not to come out here and just talk about his recent wins over Cesaro. You don’t need to have him point out to us that he’s smaller than everyone else because WE CAN SEE THAT ON OUR OWN, and just in case we don’t get the point, you can have the announcers make it.
Cesaro came out and sucker-punched Ricochet in a way that made Ricochet look like an idiot. This was apparently everyone else’s cue to start fighting as well. Ceasro dragged Ricochet down to ringside and eventually we had the babyfaces standing tall in the ring. We went to commercial, and when we came back we were just in time for...

BRAUN STROWMAN, RICOCHET, & THE MIZ vs. BOBBY LASHLEY, SAMOA JOE, & CESARO- 6.75/10
All of you spot-monkey fans were probably impressed by Braun’s kip-up, but I was amazed by the fluidity of that entire sequence, from the wristlocks all the way through the ducking of the clothesline and the big leapfrog to the “block the hip toss, then hit a clothesline” spot.
This was a good six-man tag. Joe abandoned his team. Ricochet got the pin on Cesaro, and might have shoot hurt him with the landing on the 630.
Anyway, apparently they only had one match booked for the first hour of the show. That sounds like a losing strategy.

CHARLY CARUSO INTERVIEWS BARON CORBIN BACKSTAGE- confusing and possibly WCW-level bad
Charly asks Corbin who the special guest referee at Stomping Grounds will be. Um... didn’t we already establish that it’s going to be Sami Zayn, and that Sami is helping Corbin in exchange for a title shot?
Corbin makes fun of Charly. Then Sami Zayn showed up with a “proposal” for Corbin, and they shooed Charly away. Did they forget that the opening segment happened? Or change the show around the day of but accidentally use the wrong pre-tape? In the past ten days we’ve had this, ROH accidentally broadcast the majority of a TV taping over their streaming service, and TNA accidentally air the wrong week’s show. AEW cannot come soon enough.

BECKY LYNCH & BAYLEY vs. LACEY EVANS & ALEXA BLISS! (w/Nikki Cross)- 4.75/10
When Becky made her entrance, Renee Young excitedly declared that it was “time for a different man-tality.” You know... like “mentality,” but Becky calls herself “the man” so they changed it to “man-tality.” No one ever explained to us what mentality of Becky’s made her different and who it made her different from, so the sentence made no sense in context, but someone has to say it because people might forget that Becky has a nickname if we don’t mention it at every opportunity.
Equally bad, though on a different axis, was Michael Cole informing us that “what I like about this match is that champions are going to team up thanks to the wildcard rule.” This is just such a stupidly basic comment to make. This is the sort of thing you’d say if you were announcing a wrestling show exclusively for second-graders. For some storyline situations you could make an argument that speaking at that sort of level is fine if you have the proper emotion because those emotions can be expressed in these basic ways and not lose their impact.
But this is not one of those situations. There is minimal storyline here, and Cole isn’t even really getting that storyline across. This is Michael Cole telling me the viewer that I am supposed to be excited about the concept of this “wildcard rule” and why I should think this match is cool/important/worth sticking around for. For the latter, this is not how you get me to stick around for a match. You do that my making the match feel like it will mean something to the story, which this one does not. It feels like water-treading match because they don’t have enough actual story to get themselves to the PPV, which has been a very common problem for WWE this year. Any story meaningfulness here comes from something that might happen with Nikki and Alexa, which Cole didn’t mention at all.
As for the former... their obsession with telling us how great the wildcard rule is is yet another symptom of WWE’s inability to see its own flaws. The problem is that their entire approach to pushing things is flawed. Coming up with a new concept to push on us the same way is not going to help!
The match itself was fine. The commentary putting Lacey Evans over so hard as being “impressive” and “adapting well” felt more like it was intended as a response to everyone who buried the Lacey vs. Charlotte match from last week. Lacey got the pin on Bayley in a sequence that involved her having to hit her finisher on Bayley three times in about one minute to put her down, which really doesn’t make her look good. This also means that Lacey Evans now has an outstanding pin on the SD women’s champion, which means that either we will get yet another month of the SD champ feuding with a heel from Raw, or it’s just a pin the champion will never get back.

SHANE MCMAHON & SAMI ZAYN BACKSTAGE- uch
So apparently the earlier segment with Zayn and Corbin was Zayn pitching on Corbin on Sami being the special guest referee for tonight’s match (the Rollins vs. Owens main event). They should have shot that in a way that was less confusing. Zayn pitched this to Shane, who made Sami the special outside referee, so we’re getting a f*ck finish in our main event. Oh joy. I’m still a little confused, too, because Sami was talking in this segment that he and Corbin didn’t already have a deal worked out, whereas they seemed to already have one in place in the opening segment.

PAUL HEYMAN PROMO- boring
He tells us that Brock isn’t going to announce his MITB cash-in in advance anymore, so Brock could be on any show at any time. So how is this different from normal?

24/7 GEEKS IN THE ELEVATOR- extremely stupid
No one has come to rescues them even though we know what elevator they are in and we know they’re stuck. The Hornswoggle line was funny, but everything else was idiotic. I imagine that Corey Graves was not far off when he compared this segment to being in hell.

IICONICS PROMO- terrible
They’re back to doing the “we have scoured the globe for worthy competition” gimmick where they bring in their own jobbers to beat up.

THE IICONICS vs. TWO JOBBERS- DUD on principle
This sh*t is going nowhere and I’m tired of it. Based on the commentary the titles weren’t on the line, but for the gimmick to do what it is theoretically supposed to, the titles have to be on the line because the idea is that there are bringing in their own tomato cans to defend their belts against so that they don’t get stripped of their titles due to inactivity but still avoid having to face worthy challengers.
Of course, the problem with this whole gimmick is that WWE has beaten it so hard into our heads that “THE MCMAHONS ARE IN CHARGE!” that I’m not angry at the IIconics for doing this but rather at the McMahons for letting them get away with it, but by allowing them to book hand-picked tomato cans as opponents and by not scheduling title shots for any combination of the myriad babyface women who have defeated them cleanly over the past two months (Becky, Bayley, Naomi, Asuka, Kairi).

BYRON SAXTON INTERVIEWS ROMAN REIGNS AFTER SUPER SHOWDOWN- didn’t like it
Roman was trying WAY too hard to come off as brooding. Byron, came off like an idiot for pointing out to Roman that Drew is a different opponent than Shane because he’s much bigger. Like Roman Reigns hasn’t spent a good chunk of the past nine months feuding with Drew McIntyre. At least Roman yelled at Byron a bit for making a stupid point.

SHANE MCMAHON & DREW MCINTYRE CELEBRATE THEIR VICTORY- This was fine heel stuff for a feud that I was already sick of before Super Showdown, so I found this boring. Making it even more boring was the complete and total lack of interruption by either Roman himself, any of his buddies (like, say, Seth Rollins or the Usos), or Shane’s enemy The Miz.

CHARLY CARUSO INTERVIEWS HAWKINS & RYDER- they tried hard, but it still wasn’t good
Charly tried to paint Hawkins & Ryder as a “Cinderella story,” but they’re not even close. The point of Cinderella’s story is she is getting unfairly prevented from her chance at meeting the prince, so her fairy godmother steps in to intervene. There was nothing unfair about the way Hawkins & Ryder were being kayfabe treated. They were total losers who were lucky to even still be employed, and didn’t do sh*t to earn their title shot. A “Cinderella” team wins their way through the tournament, continually upsetting higher-ranked opponents. It’s not a Cinderella story if the team gets blown out and eliminated in the first round but then right before the finals all of the players on all of the other teams in the tournament other than them and one of the teams in the finals die when the hotel they’re all staying at collapses in an earthquake so they get inserted into the finals simply because there is no one else left and they somehow manage to win.
It’s a big upset, yes, but it’s not a “Cinderella story” because the whole point of the evil stepfamily framing is to get sympathy for our babyface before sending her to meet the prince. Hawkins & Ryder’s version of the story is that she was simply too poor to go to the ball but they got a winning lottery ticket so she wasn’t poor anymore and was able to go. No one is saying that she didn’t do the necessary work to impress the prince into wanting to marry her, but if someone else impressed the prince more and he married her instead, you wouldn’t feel too sorry for Cinderella because she still won the lottery and isn’t poor anymore.
Ryder noted that Hawkins had his huge losing streak and that he himself had at one point one over a year without having a match on Raw. While that is technically true, it’s a little deceiving, as for the first three and a half months of that period (as best I can tell, it was from 12/28/2017 to 12/28/2018), he was actually a member of the Smackdown roster and did have several televised matches on Smackdown. Also, his point is quite blunted by the fact that now that they have supposedly turned things around and are the Raw Tag Team Champions... they still haven’t been on Raw for a month, and are only 2-2 on Raw since then, with their only victories being in regular tag team matches against The Revival.
Hawkins did a better job of getting over what needed to be gotten over (Usos good, Revival bad, we’re still going to win), but this whole thing was bad.

WWE RAW TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: Zack Ryder & Curt Hawkins(c) vs. The Revival vs. the Usos- 5.5/10
The Revival won a relatively short match when Dawson stole Jey’s pin on Ryder.

CHARLY CARUSO INTERVIEWS SETH ROLLINS- a decent babyface promo by Seth mentioning all of the various heels who are circling around him at the moment.

THE 24/7 DORKS ARE STILL STUCK IN THE ELEVATOR- dumb
They were having a therapy session. Apparently the guys who didn’t make it into the elevator were standing around on the bottom floor by the door the whole time. Someone got the door opened and everyone tried to pin Truth but he escaped. I’m already more than sick of this.

THE LATEST INSTALLMENT OF “BRAY WYATT’S ODD, EERIE, FRIGHTENING, SCARY FIREFLY FUNHOUSE”- Yes. That’s what Michael Cole called it, and in a voice that made it clear that he found the Firefly Funhouse to be none of those things.
Bray has just finished putting up a sign with colorful letters on a cardboard background that says “abandon hope all ye who exit here.” How much to you want to bet those are his shoot feelings. Also, please feel free to insert your own NXT vs. main roster joke here.
This whole thing was very good and you really should watch this for yourself so I’m not going to go into all of the little details. What I will say is that I thought this finally gave us a taste of exactly which sort of crazy Bray Wyatt currently is, which is important because while the purpose of these segments is to get Bray’s character over, as his previous incarnation’s issues exposed, in for the character to really capture our imaginations and have staying power, we have to be able to understand him. These vignettes have been working because they have been dropping clues (although I will say that I thought last week’s was rather disconnected and just seemed like them trying make an inside reference).
The one puzzle piece in this segment that I’m not quite sure of is what the purpose of Bray allowing Ramblin’ Rabbit’s “I might expose what’s really going on here” line to be included in the clip was. And Bray clearly did that on purpose because this is not regular WWE TV, so I do think that is a question we have to ask. Others have made this observation before and I almost went into it last week as well, but I think that WWE’s insistence on framing this as “just another part of the show, and one we’re kind of proud of because it’s getting buzz” is a huge mistake, and the reason for that is because if it is being presented as a “regular” part of the show you are losing out on the opportunity to use the announcers to get fans thinking in this manner. The announcers should be not only weirded out by this but they should be worried, because with Bray Wyatt involved there is clearly something nefarious going on. These should be treated as tapes Bray is sending in and WWE is airing them because Bray is due the same rights as any other wrestler, but WWE themselves should be worried and trying to figure out what any of this might mean, which will only add to the atmosphere of discomfort (and if you can tell by social media response that fans aren’t quite thinking in the right direction, you can use the announcers to drop hints via questions they ask that send fans down the right path of inquiry).

SINGLES MATCH WITH SAMI ZAYN AS SPECIAL GUEST OUTSIDE REFEREE: Seth Rollins vs. Kevin Owens- no rating, bad segment
Rollins’ ribs are all taped up. Things went exactly how you’d think they would. They told their story well, but it was completely miserable to watch. In theory the idea of this is that we’re supposed to buy the PPV to see how the babyface will overcome these odds, but based on the story they’re actually telling here (and the way wrestling fans think), the message they’re actually sending is “buy the PPV to see the babyface get f*cked out of the world title,” and that does not sell PPVs.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- dull
Corbin tries to attack Rollins but Seth fights him off. Zayn also tries to attack Rollins but gets beaten up with a chair because we want to go off the air with the babyface standing tall, but also don’t want him to win the main event and don’t want him to beat up the challenger.


Another dreadful episode of Raw. Stomping Grounds somehow looks even worse than it did coming out of the Saudi show.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

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Re: BRM Reviews the 6/10/2019 Raw (dreadful)

Post by cero2k » Jun 11th, '19, 16:10

That show broke the lowest rating record outside of holidays. 2.13M
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KILLdozer
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Re: BRM Reviews the 6/10/2019 Raw (dreadful)

Post by KILLdozer » Jun 11th, '19, 16:23

I saw some reddit dude pose the question about Mercy The Buzzard eating the rabbit before and attempting to do so once more...it may not be what they're going for...but buzzards only scavenge upon the already dead...tie that in with his sudden return with seemingly no problem at all...was the rabbit already dead? Making him "undead", meant to return once more as he probably will? Lol.
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Big Red Machine
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Re: BRM Reviews the 6/10/2019 Raw (dreadful)

Post by Big Red Machine » Jun 11th, '19, 16:46

KILLdozer wrote: Jun 11th, '19, 16:23 I saw some reddit dude pose the question about Mercy The Buzzard eating the rabbit before and attempting to do so once more...it may not be what they're going for...but buzzards only scavenge upon the already dead...tie that in with his sudden return with seemingly no problem at all...was the rabbit already dead? Making him "undead", meant to return once more as he probably will? Lol.
I don't think the "death" was meant to be taken as an actual death. This is Bray trying to show us the things going on in his head.
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