John Cena buries Roman Reigns!
Brock Lesnar says a naughty word!
And weekly title changes are now officially a thing.
I’m Oli Davis and this is 28th August, 2017 edition of Monday Night Raw...in about 4 minutes.
The Miz Intercontinental Title Raw opened with Kurt Angle interrupting a
promo that Miz never even started, presumably about how the Intercontinental title wasn’t
defended at Summerslam.
To make amends, the Raw GM announced a No. 1 contender’s over-the-top Battle Royal
starting right now.
Here comes R-Truth, Curt Hawkins and Kalisto, you might’ve thought.
And you’d be right.
But the usually lower-mid-card gimmick actually featured some significant names: The Hardy
Boyz, Finn Balor and Whoah It’s The Big Shave.
The match itself had a few misjudged spots - like Bray Wyatt doing his BLEUGH thing to
eliminate Balor, and Goldust and R-Truth completely forgetting they were in an intense blood feud
the other month.
But Jason Jordan received a nice pop at the end, and Balor, Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson
had a neat mini-Bullet Club moment.
Jeff Hardy surprisingly won the match, getting to face Miz for the title next week.
Which could be a one-and-done encounter...or the beginning of the Hardyz tag team’s DELETION!
Enzo Amore beat Noam Dar Enzo Amore beat Noam Dar in his debut Cruiserweight
match.
It’s rather harmful for the division - some guy treated like a jobbing joke on the main
roster walks into 205 Live and is booked as a title contender.
Brock Lesnar Promo Paul Heyman did his usual ‘I’m going to
fill the next few weeks until the pay-per-view with promos’ schtick until Brock Lesnar
grabbed the mic.
Lesnar is far more succinct with his words, summarising Heyman’s promo for Braun Strowman
as: “what he’s trying to say, is Suplex City, b****.”
Vince!
He said a naughty word!
Cesaro beat Seth Rollins, Dean Ambrose beat Sheamus
Dean Ambrose and Oooh Kingslayer Seth Rollins continued their feud with Cesaro and Sheamus
in singles matches.
Cesaro and Ambrose won their respective bouts, making it a victory a piece.
The matches were well-wrestled, but the Shield storyline has hit a lull after its Summerslam
title win high.
Emma beat Mickie James Emma’s match against Mickie James had the
heated stipulation of not being allowed tweet hashtags anymore.
But quicker than you can tweet #WhatHappenedToEmmalina, Emma pinned James to win.
John Cena & Roman Reigns beat Galanderson In the segment of the night - and arguably
the last few months - John Cena and Roman Reigns signed their No Mercy match contract,
despite Dirty Sheets reporting Reigns would face Miz at the pay-per-view, and Cena would
take on Samoa Joe.
Their dueling promo worked genuine fan criticism into each man’s gripes with each other.
Reigns accused Cena of burying younger talent, and of being a “fake ass, part-time b****”
- Vince!
Vince!
He said a naughty word, too!
- while Cena labelled Reigns “a cheap ass, corporately-created John Cena bootleg.”
The content was brilliantly scripted, but when Roman seemingly stumbled a line, Cena
jumped in with the wonderfully improvised, “it’s called a promo, kid.
If you wanna be the Big Dawg, you’re gonna have to learn how to do it” - burying Reigns’
promo skills.
It felt real, and almost cathartic - seeing these two frustratingly booked characters
give a voice to many of our opinions.
The template is obviously The Rock vs Cena from several years ago, especially with how
that feud first got physical - a throwaway tag team match.
The segment was interrupted by Galanderson - usually a welcome presence, NERDS, but not
here, puncturing the promo’s realism with an old fashioned wrestling formula.
Angle made it Galanderson vs the team of Cena and Roman, which the Golden Shovels won.
Elias, Meet Pelvis Wesley The standard Elias sing song was interrupted
by Jerry Lawler introducing Southpaw Regional Wrestling’s Pelvis Wesley, who The Drifter
beat up.
With Raw being in Memphis, that makes sense on paper, but Lawler getting to punch Elias
would’ve got a much better reaction.
Alexa Bliss beat Sasha Banks The main event saw Alexa Bliss get her rematch
against Raw Women’s Champion Sasha Banks - the story being that Banks always loses
her title defences.
So WWE booked Sasha to finally break her losing streak and overcome the Wicked Witch, right?
No.
Bliss won clean in the middle with a DDT.
It looks like the Summerslam title change was just done for the sake of it, especially
with Banks replacing an injured Bayley for the match.
The longterm plan was always for Bliss to go up against Nia Jax, which admittedly had
a really good post-match angle.
After celebrating with Alexa, Jax took out the new champion - finally setting up a feud
between the two.
Unfortunately, all this came at the expense of Banks, whose character has been fundamentally
discredited.
So that was this week’s Raw in about four minutes.
Here’s the usual ratings recap, from top to bottom - In Awe, Cor, AVRAWGE, Poor and
Bore.
I’ll reveal my rating very shortly, but first, vote in the poll above my head to give
yours.
I’ll announce the results in tomorrow’s WrestleTalk News.
The Women’s Title change was unfortunately very harmful to one of Raw’s more over performers
in Banks, and the rest of the show - mainly the three ‘E’s, Elias, Enzo and Emma - was
mostly filler.
But the Cena Reigns promo was so good, the overall episode rating was elevated a whole
place.
This week’s Raw is Cor.
But what does this mean for the Roman Reigns plans reported before Monday’s episode?
And why is Randy Orton unhappy on Smackdown?
Click the videos to the left to find out, press subscribe and support WrestleTalk on
Patreon.
I’ve been Oli Davis and that was wrestling.