In this WrestleTalk News, Ronda Rousey cautioned backstage following her return promo, the
WWE locker room is upset about the treatment of one particular wrestler, Oli’s review
of last night’s Raw, and more!
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Since returning at the Royal Rumble, Ronda Rousey hasn’t exactly been the most popular
of people in the wrestling fandom.
With the one-two punch of her and Brock Lesnar winning both Royal Rumble matches, and her
setting up a match with Charlotte Flair at WrestleMania instead of Becky Lynch, which
is what fans actually wanted, her return hasn’t exactly been smooth sailing thus far.
And you might be forgiven for thinking this, but apparently she’s supposed to be a babyface
in her feud with Flair.
I know, I was surprised too!
The main reason for the confusion though is because on her return promo on Raw last week,
she essentially said all the fans suck and they’re all stupid and she hates them.
Alright maybe not quite as harsh as that, but she wasn’t exactly complimentary of
the fanbase because they booed her the last time she was there.
What a babyface.
As it turns out, the promo wasn’t just negatively received by fans, but also backstage too,
as according to Dave Meltzer on Wrestling Observer Radio Rousey was cautioned backstage
about her attitude, saying “It was explained that you have to let [the fans turning you]
go, because if you’re gonna be bitter about that, you’re not gonna be a very good babyface.”
Wait, really?
Coming across as bitter, unrelatable and inherently unlikeable makes you a bad babyface?
I can’t believe it.
On a Facebook Gaming stream, glad she gets to still do that while other wrestlers can’t,
Ronda mentioned “It’s hard not to take it personally” from fans, which seems to
be the issue that’s gotten her in a spot of trouble.
Someone who maybe should take it personally a bit more is Big E, who can you believe it
just over a month ago was still WWE Champion.
You wouldn’t know that looking at the product in recent weeks though, being unceremoniously
dumped out of the Rumble match without eliminating anyone, and being moved to SmackDown with
no explanation and tagging with Kofi Kingston again.
According to Wade Keller of PWTorch, it’s exactly this treatment that has upset a number
of wrestlers backstage, who mentioned that they weren’t aware of any issue with him
that would have called for him having the rug pulled out from under him like this.
One person described him as “a magnificent human being who doesn’t deserve this treatment”.
Especially after Kofi, I don’t know what we expected, but for some reason we all held
out hope didn’t we?
Fool me once, shame on me.
Fool me twice, shame on me again for still believing this company could treat their wrestlers
correctly.
And speaking of treating wrestlers correctly, Shane McMahon sure wanted a bit more of a
spotlight than he’s worth didn’t he?
After his attitude at the Royal Rumble reportedly being the reason he was let go from WWE, more
details have come to light, some of which Luke covered in yesterday’s news video where
he wanted to out-strike former UFC fighter Matt Riddle.
According to a new report from Dave Meltzer on Sunday Night’s Main Event podcast, Shane’s
whole attitude and problems began when Vince McMahon pulled Seth Rollins from the Royal
Rumble, as Shane was scheduled to interact with Seth to set up their WrestleMania programme.
Instead the two were then reportedly scheduled to face off inside the Elimination Chamber,
but due to Shane instead deciding the Rumble was now all about him and being fired by his
own dad, he was then replaced in the Chamber by Austin Theory.
And now hot tag to Oli!
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And now it’s time for my review of last night’s Raw… in about 5 minutes.
It’s already the go-home go-home show for Elimination Chamber, which feels like it’s
got lost a bit this week with the biggest event of the year going on.
No, not the Road to WrestleMania.
No, not the series encore of Resident Alien either.
I’m talking about the Winter Olympics, which bumped this week’s episode of Raw to the
Syfy channel - which will likely result in the show’s lowest viewership ever.
Now, you’ve got two options here: put on a huge show to give the luge, gun skiing or
whatever is getting highlights on the USA Network some real competition, and reward
those who tuned into Raw anyway.
Or phone it in with an episode of hardly any consequence.
Guess which one WWE chose!
Thankfully, the show started off great, with the third and final round of the Alpha Academy
vs RKBro Academic Challenge: The Quiz Bowl.
This was another home run of a segment, helped by Randy Orton actually being there unlike
last week.
Chad Gable was again the comedic standout, with the writing using the Are You Smarter
Than a 10 Year Old format really well.
Otis got his answer right, choosing C for Texas.
Well done, Otis, you didn’t spell C wrong.
He kept shouting HAM when he saw Hamlet as an option for the Shakespeare question.
And Orton got a load of cheers for [ENTER YOUR LOCAL SPORTS TEAM HERE] references.
It all came down to a question on Metric Conversions, which, if you weren’t aware, is a drugs
reference.
But it wasn’t Riddle who answered.
Randy stepped forward saying I’m Not the Only one who bakes.
Which was a line botch, but I don’t mind, I get where he’s going.
RKBro won, meaning they’ll get a title shot soon, while Chad Gable sold the sound of the
buzzer like he was being beaten down with a steel chair.
The Street Profits challenged Alpha Academy for a match after.
Despite the emotional turmoil of what they’d just been through, Gable neatly pinned Angelo
Dawkins off an ankle lock reversal.
Giving him and Otis momentum heading into their RKBro match.
RKBro, meanwhile, will have a RKBroga party next week.
Unfortunately, the episode didn’t really pick up again until the main event.
Bobby Lashley struggled to cut an engaging promo on Brock Lesnar even though he was playing
up being in his hometown for this episode.
AJ Styles beat Damien Priest in a very well worked match, but the crowd never really got
into it.
It was an odd match to book, too, with Priest being US Champion and AJ part of the Chamber
match.
You didn’t want to beat either guy, which historically means DQ copout finish for WWE.
But, weirdly, AJ beat Priest very clean.
In the last week, after being heavily protected for the better part of a year, Priest looked
like a jabroni for Omos in the Rumble match, wasn’t on Raw last week, and got beaten
clean here.
They later announced AJ vs Priest for the US title next week.
I think we could see a title change.
On MizTV, we had Miz and Maryse on one side, and Rey and Dominic Mysteiro on the other.
These mixed tags are getting out of hand.
This is much more Miz’s level, his narcissism making him target Rey for getting to be on
the front cover of 2K22.
He cut a very good promo with the money line: Dom is a lot taller than Rey.
Are you sure you’re not Eddie’s son?
Dom stepped up and then beat Miz thanks to some babyface revenge.
This is a fine midcard story.
It’s our weekly Bianca Belair beating a recent participant in the women’s tag team
championship picture in 3 minutes match.
She beat Nikki A.S.H.
here.
Dana Brooke and Reggie have started a will they/won’t they romance story.
Which is genuinely hard to predict when there’s this little sexual chemistry between them.
Kevin Owens put on another very good TV match with Austin Theory, avenging his loss from
last week and winning with a Stunner.
Unfortunately, it derails Theory’s momentum heading into the Chamber with the anti-push
of 50/50 booking.
Owens asked definitely not Raw General Managers Adam Pearce and Sonya Deville to be put into
the Chamber match because he won this week, because the people of Texas need him for WrestleMania
- which maybe felt like a joke about Shane McMahon’s backstage behaviour at the Rumble,
trying to change everything so he could set up his Mania program?
Whatever it was, it set up a main event angle later.
Becky Lynch added a really cool psychological angle to her feud with Lita, saying how hurtful
it is for your hero to try to take everything you’ve fought for away from you, in a Kill
Your Idols narrative.
They brawled and Lita stood tall.
Liv Morgan and Doudrop had really good small vs big chemistry in their match, which Doudrop
won heading into the Chamber.
The Alexa Bliss segments are still going on and are totally uninteresting.
And the main event was supposed to be Riddle vs Seth Rollins to build the Chamber match,
but KO attacked Riddle for the DQ, prompting the dream RK-Bro vs Seth and KO feud I was
fantasy booking last month.
Orton’s hot tag was the biggest reaction on the whole show, but Seth stomped Riddle
to win.
In a fun continuation of their relationship, Seth just walked off laughing after Orton
RKO’d Owens in the post-match What did you think of Raw?
Let me know in the comments.
61% of you voted for Veer isn't even on SyFy on our poll on a pole match on the community
tab.
That a months old joke won the poll shows just how missable this show was.
Apart from the Academic Challenge finale, this episode felt completely skippable.
Which means this week’s Raw is 45%.
Now watch Adam Blampied’s 10 biggest cancelled WrestleMania plans…