LAST TIME ON WWE MONDAY NIGHT RAW…
Andrade and Angel Garza earned the #1 contenders’ spot for the WWE Raw tag team titles. Randy Orton somethingsomethingsomething Drew McIntyre. Sasha Banks became the Other Two Belts Wife. We said a sad farewell to Kairi Sane, who has set sail back home to Japan.
TONIGHT: We’re promised a new faction will rise and the United States title will be united under one ugly-ass belt. Plus, just because we need a ratings pop, it’s the return of Shane McMahon and his baby punch offense. Let’s get into it, shall we?
POP-ish: United Belts of America
Surprisingly we start off with the match to unite the true US title (held by the no-longer-quarantined Apollo Crews) and the fake US title created by MVP. The beginning of the show is plagued by technical difficulties, such as mics dropping out and lights flickering. Yes, this will become important later. MVP cuts a promo prematch promo where he threatens to send Crews “back to catering with Cedric Alexander and Ricochet.” Ouch. When Crews enters, the Battle of the Ugly-Ass Belts is on!
MVP takes advantage early, but Crews takes out all three members of the Hurt Business with a dive outside the ring, and it’s almost a done deal from there. Apollo hits a release suplex into a Bama Bomb, and just like that, we have a… retained? United States champion. It wasn’t exactly Razor and Shawn for the IC title, but at least this feud has a landing point here.
When Apollo is interviewed backstage he gushes out to his kids “your Daddy is the US champ!” and states that will be hanging the “old” US belt in their bedroom when he comes home. Sweet moment, but it just gives legitimacy to the Dollar Tree Belt that MVP “bought”. It was a rough segment, but the reconciling of the US belts was a relief, even if we have to stare at that monstrosity of a title belt for the next several years.
BOTCH: Behind Door #3
After a quick interview with MVP complaining about losing the title and the horrible working conditions, we get a shot of a dimly lit door and a shadowy Virgil-looking guy standing guard. Beyond that door is Shane McMahon and his big innovation. What could it be? A million dollars? A Playboy model? The President? A guy in a goofy turkey costume? Stay tuned…
POP: The Wives
Bayley Dos Straps and newly confirmed Sasha Two Belts come out for an interview, and immediately castigate Sara for conducting “boring” questions and answer interviews. The Wives have a brilliant idea to spice things up with their own movie-style trailer. They even got the “In a world…” guy to do the narration. These two have created a neat little universe for themselves, and it is working at all levels. It doesn’t even matter that they are singles champs on one particular show, they are the WWE’s Team Rocket of 2020, and they are shooting straight up to the stratosphere!
Unfortunately for them, Asuka interrupts via video and shortly thereafter, Shayna Baszler walks in on the interview. Saying she has waited long enough for her shot at the Raw Women’s title, Shayna cold cocks Sasha. I honestly don’t know who to root for in this apparently blossoming feud, but way to put a button on this segment, ladies!
Meh: Mediate Owens Mediate
The KO Show is up next, and his guests are two thirds of the former Riott Squad, Ruby Riott and Live Morgan. Ruby enters first and says she is proud to have put an end to the Iiconics bullshit. She wishes Liv could have shared it with her, and Liv comes out to “Jerry, Jerry, Jerry” chants. The tension between the two is palpable as KO tries to play mediator between the two. Eventually we get a breakthrough as Ruby takes responsibility for taking her frustrations out on Liv (she misses Sara Logan-Erik, BTW). Before the two can officially bury the hatchet, two wild Iiconics appear. Billie Kay taunts Liv for her win last week after “400 losses in a row”, to which Liv retorts “No one starts a riot(t) better than us!” This seals the deal and teh Squad jumps the Iiconics. Looks like we got us a feud, boys.
This leads into a tag match between the two, and the Squad make short work of the Iiconics. The Riott Squad reunion was nice, if a little drama-heavy, and the match could have been longer. The most disconcerting part of it, however, was KO’s conciliatory tone through the segment. It just didn’t feel natural for some reason.
POP: Drew’s Mic Game
After a quick backstage segment where MVP grouses some more about things falling over and unsafe working conditions, we go to the champ, who is indeed here. Drew McIntyre admits that Randy Orton warned him it was coming, which nicely ties into Summerslam’s “you’ll never see it coming” tag line. He says that RKO is motivated to take the WWE title, but he is motivated to keep it.
It was about this point that I realized how strong Drew’s promo skills are. He made his points, he told a story that didn’t rely on cliches to get himself over, and he struck all the right notes to make himself a believable character. If one good thing has come out of the COVID Era, it’s that Drew and others have been able to sharpen their promos. I can’t wait to hear them in front of a crowd again.
Drew continues to drill down on Orton, calling him out on his privilege and for leaving “legitimate crap” for others to clean up. This brings Orton out, with Ric Flair in tow. Orton challenges McIntyre’s points, saying he is in the WWE because he enjoys giving out RKOs and head punts. He also dares Drew to come up with one original opinion of him.
Drew fires back that when Orton had a chance to offer a kind word to a broken McIntyre ten years ago, he kept on walking. He then calls Orton a “selfish prick” and informs him that he has a lot of receipts to cash in at Summerslam.
Great segment, and that was without Flair even saying a word.
POP: Nia Gonna Be Here For a While
Nia Jax comes out to the ring and is accompanied by the red-headed exec she beat up last week, Pat Buck. Instead of apologizing to him, Nia cuts him down for being scrawny (despite the fact that he’s almost as tall as her) and challenges him to a match. Buck announces that she has been indefinitely suspended without pay, and she responds by shoving him down and stomping him. At least she won’t be crippling any other wrestlers for a couple of weeks. Thank God!
POP: The Beltless Business
A quick triple threat match happens for the 24/7 title, with Tozawa managing to take the win and the belt. Suddenly the Hurt Business is without a belt to brag on, legit or not. Surely they’ll get another prize soon, but for the moment we’ll just have to settle for MVP and his faux leather couches appearing in the ring for the VIP Lounge.
OH GOD: Shane’s Going Underground
Shane McMahon finally emerges from his hiding place and announces that his new innovation “Raw Underground” will be premiering in the third hour. A shudder of disbelief passes through the TV audience, like the ghosts of bad ideas past. This cannot end well.
BOTCH: Where Are We Going With This?
Baszler and Banks tangle in a non-title match, and it seems that we are being set up for yet another edition of “X has pinned the champion”. It all ends in a DQ however, when Asuka shows up to attack Bayley in a bit of payback for injuring Kairi last week. She wants a shot against Sasha at Summerslam, but she’ll have to get through Bayley next week on Raw. It’s nice that they seem to be getting back to booking next week’s show in advance, but there should have been a bit more time given to the women to wrestle.
BOTCH: A Shot Of Poison (no, not that one)
We get a pair of singles matches between The Street Profits and Los Ingobernables del Raw (Garza and Andrade). Garza wins his match against Dawkins, but the Andrade-Montez Ford is stopped after a few minutes of Ford clutching his stomach. A few minutes later, Dawkins announces that his partner may have been poisoned, and Bianca Belair confronts Zelina Vega to find out she had anything to do with it. I’m just not sure what to think of this yet, but it just doesn’t seem to be a poppin’ kind of angle development.
BOTCH: No JUSTUS, No Peace
Throughout the show we have technical problems affecting the quality of the broadcast. The cause for this is revealed late in the third hour, when we get footage of mysterious, black clothed figures blowing up a power generator. Granted, an actual generator explosion would probably have caused more than some light flickering and mic problems, but this is the same company that had Mick Foley survive a fall onto a power transformer back in the day.
This might be Tozawa’s ninjas, or it might be the mysterious “Justus” faction that was rumored to be debuting this week. Not much is made of this incident beyond the segment, which seems to be a mistake. It would be nice to have this expand in the following weeks, but in all likelihood it will fall down the memory hole.
OH FFS! End! EEEEEEEND-ah!!!
Oh boy, we get another recap of the Seth Rollins-Rey Mysterio feud! Seriously, this recap runs for about 8 minutes detailing every event that has happened between the two. Why this has become the Most Important Feud going today is beyond me, but they insist on replaying and adding onto it every week. By the end of August, Raw will be a ten minute promo by the Wives, followed by an in-depth examination of this angle.
Finally we go back live, and Rollins and Murphy are here. Seth accuses Tom Phillips of being a biased journalist and proceeds to run him down verbally. He says we need a new voice on Raw, and orders Murphy to remove Phillips. Samoa Joe, who has been sitting and stewing this whole time, finally stands up and stops Murphy from harming his colleague.
Seth and Murphy retreat to the ring and wait for Joe to come in and kill them. Unfortunately for them, Dominick comes in from behind and cleans house with a kendo stick. He gets some impressive moves on the two, including a great dive off the turnbuckle. As Rollins and Murphy scatter, Dominick announces that he will battle Seth at Summerslam. This segment would have been much better without the overlong recap package. Maybe next week.
POPOTCH: Brawl For All 2.0
Finally, there is Shane-o Mac’s “innovation”, Raw Underground. It actually premiered a bit earlier in the show, but I wanted to give it space here. Shane introduces RU in what looks like a dirty gym, and declares that this portion of the show will have “very low rules”. Not a word about ineffective baby punches, however. Apparently RU is a weird combination of ECW, Bloodsport, and Monday Nitro, replete with barely dressed dancers and a ropeless ring.
The first fight is a guy named Daba Kato,who takes out one, and then another no-name opponent in short order. A few minutes later, Erik of the Viking Raiders has a quick match vs another jobber. At the end of the show, Dolph Ziggler has a decisive win against Brock Les… of COURSE it’s another jobber! Not exactly an impressive debut for this concept.
Afterwards, the Hurt Business enters the “arena” and announces that they are taking over Raw Underground. They beat up some more jobbers, and instead of being upset at HB’s impudence, Shane says he’s glad they showed up and invites them to come on down any time.
To be honest, I don’t know what to think of this idea. If I were booking it, I would maybe use this as a springboard to a WWE Network show. Historically, combining two different combat sport styles has worked poorly on the pro wrestling front. Certainly, individual wrestlers with boxing, karate, or MMA backgrounds have done well in the squared circle, but as a subgroup concept having these other sports as a major attraction on a wrestling card has not fared well.
Additionally, the whole thing seemed forced. Had this been shot with a single camera instead of “Dunn style” it might have been more enjoyable. It felt like the McMahons were trying too hard to be extreme, but ultimately ended up feeling as dated as one of Shane-O’s dad baseball jerseys.
This week was an improvement over last week, but the leaning in on “technical difficulties” in the first hour and Raw Underground in the last just dragged things down in the big picture.
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