In this WrestleTalk News, fans hijack Raw, networks frustrated with WWE, why Ric Flair
was released and my review of last night’s WWE Raw.
I can’t believe I’m going to do this.
Years, years I’ve been trying to crack how to get people to subscribe on YouTube.
The only place I didn’t crack... was my dignity.
But the three times I’ve danced for subs over the last two weeks has shown our best
growth for the last 12 months.
Subscribe and enable notifications to always on for daily wrestling news what am I doing
with my life- Fans returned to live WWE shows three weeks
ago now, which can only mean one thing: their three week push is over and Vince McMahon
is already annoyed with them.
Not quite being able to let go of the ThunderDome era, where WWE’s production could give them
any crowd reaction they wanted, both Raw and SmackDown TV episodes are still piping in
artificial cheers and boos because the live fans aren’t getting behind the right people.
How could people not cheer for Jaxson Ryker?
There’s absolutely zero baggage there.
But three weeks into being on the road again, the WWE state propaganda machine came up against
its toughest challenge yet: people who live in Chicago, a wonderful city that arguably
has the best wrestling crowds in the world.
And given the recent rumours of their prodigal son CM Punk’s debut in AEW, and Saturday’s
release of Bray Wyatt, they had more than enough material to go on.
Videos posted on Twitter from people there live show the crowd already chanting loudly
for CM Punk during the Main Event tapings that took place before Raw.
In the episode itself, the fans almost hijacked the MizTV segment, with Damien Priest nearly
being thrown off his script.
And during the opening Bobby Lashley and Goldberg segment, really proving how much the fans
want to see Goldberg back, the audience chanted ‘We Want Wyatt’.
To combat this, WWE’s production team had their own on demand crowd reaction soundboard,
trying to drown out the Wyatt and Punk chants for the TV broadcast, along with making some
wrestlers’ receptions sound bigger than they were.
Problem is, someone must’ve clicked on the wrong mp3 file.
For the hipster kids, an mp3 file is like a vinyl record not on Spotify.
During Drew McIntyre’s entrance, WWE played ‘thunderous crowd reaction clip number 8’
which didn’t appear fake at all.
Unfortunately, in that reaction, viewers at home could hear Michael Cole say “The 16-time
World Champion” - suggesting the audio was taken from a John Cena entrance using Cole’s
commentary.
Do you like artificial crowd noise in WWE shows?
Or does it really take you out of the action?
Let me know in the comments down below where I’ll be replying to people for the first
30 minutes after this video goes live FROM OUTTA NOWHERE!
As much as they probably want to, though, WWE can’t also pipe in crowd noise over
their meetings with TV networks.
According to Andrew Zarian of the Mat Men Podcast, there has been “a lot of frustration
from the networks regarding Bray [Wyatt’s] release.”
He then quoted a network source who said “Bray’s release is really disappointing and a little
scary that top stars are being let go”.
This is just the latest instance of WWE’s TV partners being unhappy with what they’ve
paid for, in the face of record low ratings this year, and trying to juggle limited star
power between the competing Fox and USA Network.
As I showed at the end of my news yesterday, where I made a joke that Ric Flair would get
released next, I can tell the future.
My speculation of him being unhappy being behind why he left - based on an interview
Flair did this year where he admitted he really didn’t like the Lacey Evans storyline - has
also now been pretty much confirmed by Fightful Select, who write Ric “grew frustrated with
certain booking decisions” that were “fairly recent”.
Let’s see if I can make it three for three with predictions…
Juventud Guerrara to face Kenny Omega at All Out.
Now it’s time for my review of last night’s Raw, in about 5 minutes.
First off WWE, you might want to take out that Ric Flair ‘wooo’ on the opening sting.
Secondly, you might also want to not book Goldberg in major title feuds going forward.
As it’s not just the fans who don’t care - who chanted for Bray Wyatt during his opening
segment - neither Goldberg or Bobby Lashley seemed to be into it either.
Goldberg came out to be face-to-face with Bobby, where he crammed in as many references
to them both being gladiators as possible, said it doesn’t matter if he’s 35, 45,
or 105 - he lives by the spear.
And this isn’t a coliseum, it’s Chicago.
And he’s Goldberg.
So you’re next.
You’re just saying words next to each other.
MVP then mouthed off to Sonberg who was at ringside.
Calm down, Sonberg.
Keep your shirt on.
I was excited Bobby and MVP might do a beat down angle with him to give this feud some
much needed emotional motivation.
But Goldberg just speared MVP instead.
I am not into this feud.
The show then cut to Drew McIntyre’s penis backstage, and Corey saying “look at the
size of Drew McIntyre’s sword”.
SCHWING!
Proving they’re just big Bollywood Boys, 16 time world champion Drew then almost easily
beat both Veer and Shanky in a handicap match, but Jinder Mahal caused the DQ.
The heels all got chairs, but Drew pulled his sword out.
The heels understandably ran away, because McIntyre could actually kill them.
Rhea Ripley then beat Nia Jax in a pretty good match for the time they were given - where
they crammed loads of near falls and Nia getting busted open hard into just five minutes of
action.
Shayna Baszler botched her interference Reginald style, letting Ripley get the roll up win
- prompting Baszler to storm off afterwards, while Rhea hit a very tiny Riptide on Jax.
It was more of a Lazy River.
Perhaps Baszler and Nia are finally over as a team, which might have been the only thing
protecting Shayna on the main roster.
The crowd came genuinely alive next for Ali, with the Chicago hometown boy getting a full
on ‘he was born in the same place I was born!’ reaction.
So, obviously, Mace and T-Bar beat him and Mansoor in a few minutes in a pointless rematch
of their loss last week.
There were some nice details here, though, with Mansoor accidentally causing the loss,
and then Ali sacrificing himself for his new friend afterwards.
With Natalya injured, Tamina beat DouDrop in a singles match, for Alexa Bliss to appear
onscreen afterwards to say ‘and the winner is Eva Marie!’
This led to DouDrop and Eva attacking Bliss backstage afterwards, and then Lily, the inanimate
doll, stood up by itself once they’d left.
Bray Wyatt was released, so this could live.
I think WWE thinks Damien Priest is a cool playboy style character going by Riddle’s
promo.
He’s not, unfortunately.
He comes off pretty lame with his ‘stand up to bullies’ generic rhetoric - which
is probably why the audience chanted for CM Punk in his MizTV segment.
It wasn’t against Priest as a person.
It was against WWE booking for being bad.
It turned into a match where Priest beat Morrison, which itself turned into a match where Priest
and Ricochet beat Sheamus and Morrison.
Ricochet had a fun spot where he slid into the steel steps on a wet floor.
The WWE 2K sponsorship has begun, with this year’s advertising slogan being: It hits
different.
Which is a whole marketing campaign pretty much saying, ‘it’s not as bad as the last
one’.
As an extra promotional tie-in, it also looks like they’re using a computer generated
version of Goldberg for the SummerSlam match graphic, because that looks nothing like the
real human person.
I expected Riddle vs Omos, in the tall guy’s second ever singles match, to be more angle
than wrestling - especially with AJ Styles weirdly not out there with him.
AJ Styles release confirmed.
Riddle hit a flurry of offence to start, but Omos just chucked him around to win.
The Tall Guy was pretty well booked here, again not taking a single full bump.
But, despite being advertised locally to sell tickets, there was still no Randy Orton from
outta nowhere.
Randy Orton release confirmed.
Commentary reminded us all how much better Keith Lee was last year, beating Orton in
his pay-per-view debut on Payback, and thankfully they recaptured a little bit of that appeal
here.
Karrion Kross impressively threw Lee around, including into the steel steps, but Keith
powered back for a great Spirit Bomb to win, which the crowd popped for massively.
I can’t wait for Lee vs Jeff Hardy now for the NXT title.
Reginald cut a promo explaining his accent and new name, Reggie, and then beat Akira
Tozawa by jumping.
His character and story has shifted from lucky escapologist to guy who’s an actual wrestler,
which hasn’t been neatly told.
WWE also appear to have grown even more bored of the underlying 24/7 title concept - with
it now being defended in actual matches instead of everywhere else.
To set up the main event, Charlotte Flair cuts a strange, overly long promo about Simone
Biles’ Olympic withdrawal that didn’t really connect to anything - awkward pop culture
reference, check - and then said how annoyed she is that everyone cashes in their Money
in the Bank shots on her, while struggling to pick out weapons from under the ring.
She made tonight’s match a No Holds Barred stipulation, and Nikki A.S.H attacked her
from behind like a morally good babyface.
I really enjoyed their actual match, thanks to a great crowd and some intense action,
but it again felt like they were telling the wrong story.
Charlotte came across like a badass tweener, destroying Nikki for 9/10ths of the match,
getting out a table when they crowd were chanting for it, charging Nikki through the barricade,
powerbombing her through the announcer’s table.
In fact, Nikki didn’t even beat Charlotte.
Charlotte did: missing Nikki with a spear and going through a table.
Nikki then hit her new finisher, a draping swinging neckbreaker, to win.
What did you think of Raw?
Let me know in the comments down below and vote in our poll on a pole match on the community
tab where 70% of you have gone for CM PUNK CM PUNK CM PUNK.
While the Punk and Wyatt chants and artificial crowd noise were embarrassing, this episode
didn’t actually do anything actively bad.
And isn’t that the benchmark for success with WWE these days?
That they don’t do anything to actively ruin their own wrestlers?
The fans were great, the in-ring action was decent.
By the usual standards, this week’s Raw is 3 out of 5.
The next few months are set to be some of the most exciting in wrestling for years,
with CM Punk and Daniel Bryan to AEW (maybe), Juventud Guerrera and SummerSlam coming up.
But far bigger is our news that for SummerSlam week, we’re all heading back into the office
for live reactions and podcasts in person once again!
To celebrate the real biggest return of the year, new annual backers on our Patreon can
now get two whole months free - where you get access to all our exclusive podcast episodes,
the special monthly fan QuizzleManias, video calls with us, entry into WrestleLeague and
more.
You’ve got until the end of the month to do it though, so click the link below now!
There's never been a better time to become a Pledgehammer!