What Happened Last Week On Raw: I have no idea! Let’s talk about that shall we.
Prelude: So you may be wondering what happened to last weeks edition of RAW Emotions. Well you see what had happened was, I apparently enjoy paying large sums of money to watch my favorite sports teams lose in person more than I do watching Raw.
I attended the Monday Night Football game last week. Which was far more exciting than any episode of Raw has been in a long time mind you. Something something ratings drop.
After that I pretty much lost track of what day it was for the rest of the week and by the time I realized it was Thursday, my desire to watch Raw in full had diminished to the point that I was just waiting for TLC.
So let’s talk about TLC!
I’m going to go over my thoughts on The WWE Title TLC Match later on in the review so we will skip that for now. But hey The Hurt Business finally beat The New Day in a tag match that counted for the titles! And I actually spelled Business right this time!
Beyond that we saw the return of Charlotte which has me on high alert for CAN THEY COEXIST shenanigans going forward and the literal arsenic murder of everyone’s favorite murder death clown. So overall it was your average WWE Network Event I guess. Birdboy did a solid write up about it here. Which brings us to..
RAW Emotions for December 21st
Not really that Empressed
So we may have meme’d this into existence. Shame on all of us. Charlotte returned at TLC to team up with Asuka because they are BEST FRIENDS now or something I don’t really know. I’m sure the person who lords over their total title reigns (that’s not how that works) and used to claim to be genetically superior to everyone is a great pal to have on road trips.
I really wish we could separate the Women’s title and Women’s Tag titles from being in the same storyline, but the prospects of them finally floating the Tag belts this Friday is at least kind of neat. At this point you might want to work on some NXT Call Ups of women tag teams even if you have to throw more people together randomly.
I’m sure we are getting Asuka against Charlotte very soon and I am super totally excited and really looking forward to that and am not being sarcastic at all with the idea of that fresh new matchup.
Sexy Muscle Friends 4 Lyfe
We had the return(?) of Dana and Mandy last week, which is nice, having actual teams is nice.
Charlotte on commentary is kind of awkward because she’s not the best talker, and face Charlotte just, doesn’t make any sense ever. Though her organic reactions to Asuka cheering on the SMF was actually kind of adorable.
However nothing they said and nothing in this tag match, which itself was pretty solid, will ever be as great as Samoa Joe saying “Sexy Muscle Friends” out loud. Seriously.
Oh, Now he’s a Philosophizer
First off, do you think Vince is regretting changing it to just Riddle right now? Because “Matt and Jeff Hardy, The Hardy Bros” is right there.
Secondly, it’s not a good outlook for Riddle when you make JEFF HARDY look like the better talker in your group. Let’s keep it to short and sweet and not long and whatever the hell that was.
More importantly, I like that The Hurt Business feels more important right now. Occasional loathing towards Cedric and his new found bravado aside, which in itself is all great. I wouldn’t be mad at Big Bob dropping the US title soon and getting at least a run at and maybe a run with the [checks notes] Oh, The WWE Title is on Raw. Never mind.
On a side note, during a Hurt Business group photo, R-Truth showed up to photo bomb, because everything R-Truth does is pretty great. Which brought out what I guess is the “24/7 Division” and I just feel really sad that guys like Ray Rowe have to fly from Ohio to Florida, put on gear and paint their face just to run around the set for less than a minute…
How to Excel at Wasting Time
So this match happened. It wasn’t what I would call good, if even calling it a match at all.
It’s really frustrating seeing two people very good at this Pro Wrestling stuff they get paid to do, seemingly being told to go out there and kill like three minutes.
Clearly you are interested in pushing Garza going forward. You know what would help that? Letting him look GOOD on TV, doing the thing this show is based on. You don’t need to have him squash people. Have him and Gulak, someone else who is really good at this Pro Wrestling thing, have a nice competitive ..seven minute match maybe? I don’t know, whatever.
I’m A Goofy Goober!
What can I say. I’m kind of pissed really. The reports of backstage people “not knowing how” to handle Miz’s cash in not withstanding, they did the still most obvious thing, and somehow still ruined it.
Miz turning TLC into a Triple Threat was the EASIEST CALL you could make, especially if you didn’t want him to win. Which I don’t really understand because he’s amazing but whatever.
Why they continue to feed him dog crap stories and watch him turn them into gold and not reward the guy I’ll never know, but to continue to take the easy stories and somehow still make him look like an IDIOT during them is seriously aggravating.
This goes all the way back to them giving Otis MITB because “lol fat guy” and not having ANY plans for it. But now you put it on someone who can actually use it and then you do that?
AND NOW YOU WANT TO TEASE ME WITH THE IDEA OF A MULLIGAN?!
If you are going to pull the “Miz didn’t actually cash in MITB” and not eventually give him another MITB I… I don’t even know..
What would honestly be worse, would be giving him another MITB and having him goof it up again because you all suck at writing.
/rant
Please stop fighting Forever
What is the point of all of this? I understand there isn’t one, but even trying to find one that’s made up is difficult.
Retribution wants Ricochet to join them, and is going to beat him up until he does. Why though? What has he done at all recently that makes him seem like a viable member to your team? He’s lost more matches this year than SLAPJACK has for god’s sake.
Why is Retribution even still a thing? They don’t do anything. Nothing they care about has any stakes. They are dead in the water and aren’t even trying to find shore.
I just feel really bad for everyone involved honestly. Mostly because all the stuff they themselves have done on their Twitter accounts is kind of funny and awesome and I just wish the people that love wrestling and have been around it their entire lives were allowed to write the shows sometimes.
I don’t even have a joke for This
So after that wonderful promo early from NOT Matt Riddle and Jeff Hardy, we get them losing to MVP and Lashley. Again, no real stakes here. We don’t even get a Challenger has pinned the Champion situation to set up a US Title match.
Also, and more importantly I would like to send a message to Jeff Hardy.
Please, for the love of god. Stop. You don’t need to kill yourself on the steps every week, at all let alone in front of no crowd. You are 40 years old man, just chill and play the hits that keep your skull intact.
Congrats, You made me hate Elias
I just.
I just don’t care man.
Elias as a gimmick doesn’t work without crowds. We know that by now. Then you go ahead and throw Jaxson Ryker with him? Of all people? I understand you want me to boo him but you don’t want THAT kind of heat I promise you.
And of course they get to beat up the Hispanic tag team. Why wouldn’t they.
If Elias starts singing “The only hood I like is the one that’s pointy and white” it wouldn’t surprise me at this point.
A brand new set? During a Recess-ion? I’ll let it Slide.
So, this was amazing.
Let’s backtrack a bit however and revisit TLC. You know the end of the show where Randy Orton literally set a man on fire in the middle of the ring. Bypassing the fact that we all were really looking forward to a Cinematic matchup, the visuals from the Firefly Inferno match were pretty cool. The spots they had were neat.
But that ending man, I don’t know. I’m sure the future payoff of “killing” The Fiend will be good, because I trust Bray, and to a point, I trust Orton as well going forward.
However, if what we get in the meantime is Alexa’s Playground? Count me all the way in on youthful yet totally not naïve Alexa and her swing set of death.
I can only hope this is leading to a legit FireFly FunHouse matchup at Mania next year and I honestly wouldn’t be mad if that was Orton’s way of moving on from WWE after the amazing year he has had.
This probably shouldn’t have went 8 Minutes
The main issue with teaming up someone like Asuka with someone like Charlotte is how absolutely overpowered they are by themselves. So as a team they should seemingly be only better right? That’s what WWE has trained us to believe over the years. Two singles stars beat established tag teams 99 times out of a 100 even when they can’t coexist.
So why did it take them so long to beat Lacey Evans and Peyton Royce of all people. They are at this point glorified jobbers, sadly. Which is the whole crux of your divisions right now. You only focus on so many people, and then when it comes time for them to not wrestle each other, they squash someone else easily to waste time.
And then you have no one established at any level, as opposed to having multitudes of tiers for your talent to be in.
Does no one watch their own matches?
How many times are we going to continue to do this same idea? Someone gets knocked into someone else and they fight about it. Not only was it dumb for people to fight about an actual accident when your opponent just happened to move out of the way.
Now we are getting pissed because someone got dropkicked into someone else? And for what? They end up winning the match anyways. None of it matters except to build tension between everyone that always wins regardless.
Styles, Miz, and Morrison at this point couldn’t beat any one of McIntyre, Sheamus, or Keith Lee 3-on-1 let alone in a stupid eggnog tag match.
The only benefit I see out of this seemingly slow build is Raw has a solid Elimination Chamber match set up already.
Now I just need Miz to get eliminated from it first and then come back after its over and cash in MITB again and actually win this time.
Let me have this please.
And that was Raw. If you enjoyed the show, Enjoyed this Column, or just enjoy life in general, give this a share. Leave a comment below with your thoughts. Feel free to stop by the SRP Discord where I probably get most of my jokes subconsciously and say hi. Until next time, I’m HGR and Tango Mike.
