AJ Styles wants to invade NXT?! Loads of WWE Legends cameo on Raw! And Stone Cold Steve
Austin probably has one too many Steveweisers and it’s awesome.
And Seth Rollins has fired a shot at AEW! Click the timestamps in the video description
below to go straight to any of those stories. I’m Oli Davis - give us a subscribe, press
the thumbs up button, and answer our question of the day in the comments: What did you think
of the Raw Reunion show? Because I’ll be replying to people FROM OUTTA NOWHERE! And
click the ‘i’ above my head to give your rating of the show - where you can choose
from: RawSome, Cor, AVRAWGE, Poor and RawFul - as I review the 22nd July Raw Reunion episode
of Monday Night Raw!
John Cena opened Raw in a t-shirt colour that, using the power of green screen editing, can
easily be replaced by cats. Or pictures of the Rock. Or AEW logos. Or even to put hair
on his head. The Usos interrupted him with a rap battle
challenge. Which Cena most definitely won when he joked Jimmy and Jay look just like
their mugshots from one of the various times they’ve been arrested. Ha, ha, drunk driving.
This was actually a pretty effective way to get the current roster over using more-established
legends. Unfortunately, that’s where that ended for the night.
The Usos brought out their shoot dad Rikishi for a Too Cool dance, but the dastardly Revival’s
music hit instead… where the heel tag team where accompanied by D-Von Dudley.
Why’s D-Von with th-Raw Reunion! Just don’t think about it!
But what about Bubba Ra-Raw Reunion! And Bubba turned WWE down.
What’s Booker T now doing on commmenta- Raw Reunion! Stop asking questions, you stupid
son of a bitch! This turned into The Usos with Rikishi obviously
in their corner vs The Revival with D-Von obviously in their’s - which the Usos won.
The 24/7 championship saw an incredible 9 title changes on this show, which began with
...Drake Maverick become a three time champion from R-Truth, where the Godfather suddenly
appeared to announce the ho train, despite there being no actual hoes with him because
it’s 2019. Oh you social justice warriors, stopping all the fun exploitation of sex workers.
Then Pat Patterson pinned ...Drake Maverick after The Boogeyman randomly distracted him
because Raw Reunion! Then in the best title change of the night,
Patteron was beaten by his former Corporation stooge buddy Gerard Brisco, which Kelly Kelly
then won to become the first ever… 24/7 champion with the same last name as her first
name. Woke move, WWE. Woke move. Then Kelly Kelly was beaten by Generic WWE
Diva from the 00s, who I later found out was Candice Michelle, who was beaten immediately
by Alundra Blayze with Melina as the special guest referee. Raw Reunion!
Then in a fun parody of the infamous WCW Nitro segment where Blayze dropped the WWF Women’s
title in the trash, the Million Dollar Man Ted DiBiase bought it from her, because everybody
has a price - apart from ...Drake Maverick who beat DiBiase for it in a limo, who R-Truth
then pinned to not only escape the episode with the title, but also with Drake’s wife
Renee Michelle. Renee’s his wife now… Drew McIntyre walked past Alicia Fox, Dana
Brooke, Kaitlyn and Santino talking about hats because RAW REUNION! And then beat up
Cedric Alexander so their match never got started.
Viking DON’T MENTION THE WAR EXPERIENCE Raiders beat Zack Ryder and Curt Hawkins to
a mostly silent crowd, really exposing WWE’s current roster as lacking in star power.
Then we got Eric Bischoff’s big WWE return… where he briefly tried to poach Mike and Maria
Kanellis to SmackDown. There’s this thing called the Wild Card rule, Eric, that pretty
much means there isn’t a brand split anymore. Anyway, Maria emasculated Mike in front of
everyone, and Ron Simmons said the word ‘Damn’ through a megaphone.
Samoa Joe then came out to insult us all for loving nostalgia so much, which reminds of
this really funny time in the 90- so Roman Reigns came down for a pretty intense brawl
that unfortunately wasn’t the start of a SummerSlam feud between them because Roman
won clean 15 minutes later. Seth Rollins did ‘comedy’ on MizTV next
by making ‘fun’ of how Brock Lesnar looks. Paul Heyman interrupting them both couldn’t
save this lazy, tired material, where Rollins claimed he’d show Lesnar isn’t a Beast,
he’s just a man - so he’ll win the Universal title at SummerSlam. We’ve all heard this
feud motivation before, and no-one’s excited by it.
Sami Zayn and Rey Mysterio had a bit of a dream match next, with Sami of course being
trained by famous luchador El Generico - what happened to that guy? And not only that, but
the commentary levelled up with Jonathan Coachman joining the desk. I CAN’T WAIT TO HEAR YOUR
EXPERT INSIGHT INTO LUCHA WRESTLING, COACHMAN! Zayn tried to walk out of the match, when
RVD, Sgt Slaughter, the Hurricane and Kurt Angle all appeared on the stage to stop him.
RAW REUNION! Rey then hit a 3 and a quarter star Frog Splash for the win.
The Street Prophets had one of the best segments of the night and it contained zero legends.
Angelo Dawkins joked about smoking weed with RVD, and Montez Ford continues to have Rock-style
charisma. AJ Styles, Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson
are now calling themselves The OC, as they’re presumably big fans of the popular mid-00s
teen drama of the same name. California! AJ took on Rollins in a singles match, which
was really just a backdrop for Shawn Michaels and Triple H to come out in Seth’s corner
as DX, to then be joined by the rest of the Kliq: Road Dogg, X-Pac, Kevin Nash and Scott
Hall. Yep, that’s everybody. There’s nobody else missing from this line-up. Raw Reunion!
Interestingly, AJ mouthed off at HBK as he left, clearly saying ‘I know where NXT is,
don’t think I won’t come down there’ - potentially setting up an NXT Club Invasion
angle where Michaels is a producer. Mick Foley tried to introduce his favourite
Raw memory on the TitanTron, but the Fiend appeared and choked him out with the Mandible
Claw. Which was cool, but it felt a bit fudged in.
In place of an actual women’s match on the show, Becky Lynch and Natalya had a pretty
intense back-and-forth on A Moment of Bliss. Braun Strowman squashed a random jobber.
And then all the WWE legends amassed on the stage for the night’s closing A Toast To
Monday Night Raw segment. It was all a bit hokey and self-congratulating until… glass
shatters, crowd go wild. Stone Cold Steve Austin cut an in-ring promo
to close the show seemingly already a few Steveweisers deep. And it was all the better
for it, as he was quite obviously off-script. It felt genuine, even when Austin said we’re
all part of a larger WWE Family. Even when he just listed various fast food items for
several minutes, he was still absolutely captivating. He then brilliantly continued to ramble when
he realised he had more time left, and started to tell a story about him and Gerald Brisco
doing something illegal in South Africa before he was told to wrap it up. Oddly, this felt
like a finale to the show, like there would be no more Raw after this. It’s been a good
run, folks! Enjoy the debut season of AEW premiering this Fall!
While I got a kick out of the cameos, that’s the Raw Reunion’s major flaw - the Legends
did nothing to hook you in for next week, for tomorrow on SmackDown, for SummerSlam
in three weeks’ time. That’s what nostalgia should be used for, to get your current wrestlers
more over and progress storylines. Not for superficial cheap pops to boost TV ratings.
This week’s Raw is AvRAWge.
And now over to Luke with the news!
Great review Oli! I’m looking forward to our own WrestleRamble Raw Review Reunion later
on today! A lot of names were listed for last night’s
Raw Reunion - including Steve Austin, Hulk Hogan, D-Generation X -”the architects the
attitude era” - Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, and most importantly, Alicia Fox. However
one of the big surprises was former WWE Champion Rob Van Dam! RVD appeared during a match between
Rey Mysterio and Sami Zayn, who along with an Olympic Gold Medalist, a superhero, and
a drill sergeant who was also a character in GI Joe - wrestling is so weird - stopped
Zayn from leaving to aide Mysterio in picking up the win.
Rob Van Dam was a surprise because he’s currently under contract with Impact Wrestling,
and is with the company until Bound For Glory. And despite tensions between WWE and Impact
Wrestling after Rhino returned to the company at Slammiversary despite still being under
WWE contract, Mike Johnson of PWInsider is reporting that Impact gave written permission
for RVD to be on Raw Reunion with no issues. And while I’m sure the nostalgia acts had
fun backstage, and the crowd enjoyed giving them their cheap pops, it was reportedly a
different story for everyone else within WWE. Dave Meltzer noted in Figure Four’s Daily
Updates that Raw Reunion was “a ton of headaches”, saying that several planned segments had to
be changed at the last minute. Now while changing and re-writing Raw on the fly isn’t anything
new - if anything it’s just another day in the office - this wasn’t because Vince
McMahon was changing his mind. According to Meltzer, it was due to some of the wrestlers
being brought in “were flagged by medical from doing anything physical” and that meant
that, “Many segments [were] changed”. Raw Reunion was reportedly an idea from The
USA Network who are concerned with the show’s falling ratings - which are down 20% from
last year. For comparison, it’s expected that this episode of Raw should top 3 million
viewers for the first time this year. And when WWE did Raw 25 last January, that episode
did 4.53 million. One of the other reasons USA Network and WWE
are looking to regain some of their viewership is due to the rise of All Elite Wrestling
- who will debut later this year on TNT and have received critical and fan praise for
their three shows Double or Nothing, Fyter Fest, and Fight for the Fallen - not to mention
the ticket demand for All Out out-drawing any WrestleMania in history.
And yesterday the roster for AEW were directing folks to a new Twitter and Instagram account
for AEWonTNT - promising a huge announcement will be coming tomorrow, which is speculated
to be a launch date for their weekly TV show in October.
Someone who doesn’t seem to concerned about this is terrible Twitter user Seth Rollins.
The former Universal Champion faced a lot of ridicule from wrestling fans around the
world when he tweeted following Stomping Grounds that WWE had the best wrestling on the entire
planet, getting into a Twitter feud with Will Ospreay that Rollins eventually apologised
for. Rollins also went after his former Shield
brother Jon Moxley - who will be facing Kenny Omega at All Out next month - and did the
same thing again during a conference call to promote Summerslam. But it wasn’t just
Moxley, as Rollins also took a shot at his new employer AEW. He told POST Wrestling,
“Now he’s competition, now he’s the one trying to take dinner off my table so
good on him but we’re going to do our best to continue to be the best here at WWE and
those guys want to step up to the big leagues to give it a shot? Then by all means but we’re
going to knock them dead just like we do everybody else.”
Thank you for watching and a special thank you to our Patreon Pledge Hammers, some of
which you can see scrolling their way into my stomach. Watch me and Pete break down even
more news from San Diego Comic Con including Kevin Feige talking about the next Avengers
movie. I’ve been Luke Owen and that was wrestling.