WWE TV 7/6 - 7/12

[...TG]

Brock vs. Jamie Noble's rednecked-up Cadillac was grandly entertaining. Although I hope Joey Mercury is okay, as that bump was nasty.

[Strummer]

the Cena/Cesaro match went over 30 minutes. Can't remember the last time a Raw match went that long.

 

I really liked the Lana/Dolph/Rusev/Summer segment. Brock destroying the car was pretty great too

[Russellmania]

a lot of people are going to praise that Cesaro/Cena match but it never quite clicked for me.

 

There were also a shitload of really frustrating WWE-isms that really hurt the match and the sad part is they were really neither guy's fault.

 

Terrible camera work and production, cutting to the cadillac to recap the earlier angle MID-MATCH WTF (nearly missing the springboard stunner), and then Cena fending off the attack from Owens immediately after the match.

[jcmmnx]

Yeah some people are marking out, but they lost me about 5 minutes before the finish. The start of the match was pretty rough with the breaks, and Cesaro working rest holds for a crowd that hated Cena. Some pretty sloppy stuff mixed with some cool shit. Brock Lesnar going ape shit was the highlight for me. I'm legit stunned no one died in that segment(assuming that car door didn't decapitate a fan).

[LariatMMBOPPO]

It apparently did hit someone though.

[WingedEagle]

Cena probably deserves WOTY this year.

[PhilTLL]

It apparently did hit someone though.

@BillNevilleNAI:

JESUS, took me a couple times to see it, but that kid got CLOCKED.

 

https://t.co/Yk27MIF4mh

After the kid gets hit, the people around him hold the bodywork in the air and cheer. Hilarious (assuming he was not seriously hurt, and surely that would have made some news).

[SomethingSavage]

I wish they'd just push Cesaro to the moon and stop all this hot & cold booking with him. The guy was getting incredible babyface reactions, as part of a heel group, over a year ago. Fans were reacting to all his big spots & basically going bananas over ANY slight tease of the Giant Swing.

But they can murmur a thought about him failing to connect to the audience, and that's that. He's shuffled down the card. It's crazy.

There was a time when they'd KILL to have a guy get over ORGANICALLY and naturally with the crowd that way. But it's like they're looking for any and every excuse not to do something with a lot of guys.

And Rusev is bordering on being completely dead in the water at this point. Lana's character used to feel like this incredibly interesting ice queen, with a monster on call at her command & looking second to only Stephanie McMahon as far as "untouchable" non-wrestler personalities go...

But now? She's so far from that. She's just another catty woman out there, doing things that make it difficult to care about her as a babyface - yet that's what, I guess, she's intended to be.

People keep talking like this is supposed to be Mero & Sable all over again. I don't see it. There's more of a 1998 Dustin Rhodes and Terri Runnels vibe to it for me. I guess that makes Dolph a Val Venis tribute act in the meantime, with Lana bragging about his athleticism & stamina as PG code words for "secksee talk."

This whole thing's so painful to watch, after Rusev went on a crazy strong run for a year plus. It's not the second coming of Sable. It's not even the second coming of Stacy Keibler.

If I had to rate how "over" the whole thing is... I guess I'd have to sandwich it somewhere between Beaver Cleavage secretly beating his girlfriend-mom & Meat being an abused bondage boy-toy for the Pretty Mean Sisters.

Yeah. I'd say that's a fair grade of this garbage.

[Loss]

Vince has gotten grumpy and overly critical of talent as he's gotten older, and he seems to think guys should prove they can draw before they get an opportunity to draw. It's nearly impossible to do that, but because of the few like Jeff Hardy that managed to pull it off, that will always be what is cited. I'm sick of this idea that Vince and Creative are something that wrestlers have to overcome. I wish it was that you had wrestlers who clearly had a connection and were on the cusp of something special, with the Creative designed to get them over the top instead of to put them back in their place. It's only a matter of time that we hear that Cesaro doesn't really move merchandise or draw television ratings. When it's one of their hand-picked stars, all they expect is that they don't see a decline in those categories when they are on top. Double standards galore - welcome to WWE.

[jcmmnx]

Is it fair to say they cooled New Day down because they were clearly starting to overshadow the Authority as the top heel act? I'm pretty baffled at that one.

[The Chief]

Is it fair to say they cooled New Day down because they were clearly starting to overshadow the Authority as the top heel act? I'm pretty baffled at that one.

 

Remember when they were very subtly suggesting that New Day were aligned with The Authority, talk about being "Authority approved" in their promos? Thankfully, they cut that from the act. I hate when every top heel needs to be aligned with The Authority. It's rare to get a top heel that just exists on their own. They were even teasing Owens being on their radar with HHH giving him subtle praise in backstage skits.

[DMJ]

On the topic of the New Day's overness...

 

I went to MITB a month or so back and, from the start of the show to even after, the "New Day Sucks" chant was BY FAR the biggest ongoing chant. The previous night, they ran an NXT show, so there were plenty of NXT chants ("Fight Owens Fight," for example) but the New Day stuff reminded me of going to random shows a few years ago and hearing "We The People" randomly shouted every 20 minutes or so. The New Day chant broke out pretty much anytime the cameras were off (pre-show, post-show, parking lot, on the line for merch - it was insane). I'm not going to say it was as omnipresent as Fandangoing, but I'd also say, the New Day gimmick and wrestlers involved can actually be a hot act for months to come, where as Fandango was a one-dimensional gimmick that only reminded me of how underrated Glenn Gilberti kinda was.

[Coffey]

Vince has gotten grumpy and overly critical of talent as he's gotten older, and he seems to think guys should prove they can draw before they get an opportunity to draw. It's nearly impossible to do that, but because of the few like Jeff Hardy that managed to pull it off, that will always be what is cited.

 

This is what's crazy to me: WWE goes out of their way to make sure that the WWE brand is the "draw" and not an individual. To the point where they go out of their way to actively cool people down. Then they hold it against them when they don't draw?

 

If you've ever seen any of the Mike Graham shoots, one of his big catchphrases is "he never drew a dime!" Says it all the time, in pretty much everything, about everyone in every company. Benoit? Didn't draw a dime. Guerrero? Didn't draw a dime. Shane Douglas? Didn't draw a dime. Jeff Jarrett? Didn't draw a dime.

 

In this day & age, who the fuck does draw? John Cena? And that's because of merch. Is there anyone else? Anyone else anywhere in the world, any country? Is there a big draw in Japan or Mexico?

[goc]

Everything I've read about the subject says AJ Styles brings in a few extra hundred fans for his indy dates. An additional 200-300 fans on the indies is pretty significant.

[Cox]

I do love WWE's reaction to the bad ratings from last week. "OK, so last week we have our worst ratings since the mid 90's built around a show with a 20 minute Cena/Cesaro match. What do we need to rebuild our ratings? A *30* minute Cena/Cesaro match!" Don't get me wrong, I'm glad the match happened and all...but that strikes me as perhaps a strange reaction to last week's poor rating.

[goc]

Maybe they just didn't overreact to the rating the way people expected them to. Doesn't seem like they did anything drastic this week as a ratings grab.

[NotJayTabb]

 

And Rusev is bordering on being completely dead in the water at this point. Lana's character used to feel like this incredibly interesting ice queen, with a monster on call at her command & looking second to only Stephanie McMahon as far as "untouchable" non-wrestler personalities go...

 

I actually think Rusev has been holding up his end of the deal really well. I mean, Ziggler and Lana have been bloody awful at every turn of this storyline, but Rusev as a brooding, broken man who had everything, only to lose it in a few months, has been killing it. He's proven he can play a role besides mute, dominant foreign heel, and he's proven he doesn't need anyone to cut promos from him. Promising to "rip out Ziggler's intestines and hang them out in my back yard" was an amazing line. I think Summer Rae has held up her end of the deal as well, and it's only how wretched the Lana/Ziggler side have been that is bringing this feud down.

[SomethingSavage]

Some of their individual performances are okay, but I don't think it justifies or salvages the program in the slightest. It's still a terrible premise, and the majority of the execution is just awful. There's no reason to care about the babyfaces in this scenario, as they're actually behaving like assholes. And, as far as emotional angles go, that's not what you should shoot for as the end goal.

 

I didn't mention Rusev's performance, but yeah. He's alright. I honestly think Mero did a HELL of a job with his over-the-top reactions back in the day. His attempts to be a spotlight hog, with all the attention on Sable, was fantastic. That still didn't save him from feeling like an afterthought in the big scheme of things. Same thing applies to Rusev in this situation.

 

Just my two cents. Everyone's entitled to their own opinions on it, of course. I just think it's been a TERRIBLE story. And I find it hard to find anything redeeming enough to enjoy it. At the very least, I'd safely say that all the key players involved will come out look worse than they did going in. Rusev, Lana, and Dolph for sure.

 

Summer Rae wasn't on the radar before this, so yeah. Maybe she comes out looking better than before. So, I suppose, if you want to argue that the idea was to create an angle that would shine up Summer Rae then... sure. I guess this at least did that, to some degree.

[NotJayTabb]

Yeah, the angle itself is pretty dreadful. As you said, there's nothing likable about the behaviour of the faces - Ziggler deciding to make out with the ex-girlfriend of a man on crutches RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM screams of heel - and I agree this angle is only going to hurt Ziggler and Lana.

 

I think the thing that might save it will be the resulting match. They've done a pretty good job of making me want to see an irate Rusev beating the heck out of Ziggler, and as long as they keep the ladies out of the ring (which I admit is up for debate), then the resulting match could be a lot of fun. If Rusev wins the feud, then he leaves it still as a tough monster, but no longer stuck with a one-note foreign heel gimmick. Of course, that is a big "if".

 

Wouldn't help Ziggler, but seeing as he's supposedly leaving and my least favourite performer in the WWE, that's no big loss.

[Badlittlekitten]

Is the Lana/Ziggler thing over with the live crowds? Don't watch their segments so I'm genuinely interested.

 

I find WWEs refusal to commit to anybody as frustrating as anyone. But Cesaro? His pre match promo made Ziggler sound like Dusty Rhodes.

 

Titus verbally slapping JBL into silence was the best bit I caught of the show. Especially sweet after Layfeild's bullying of him a few years back.

[Grimmas]

This Raw was mostly good and I almost watched the whole thing. Quite a shock to me.

[SomethingSavage]

Well I was originally going to ask what happened to the Harper & Rowan team, but I just saw that Rowan's out with an injury. Well hell.

 

I really wish they'd let the Rhodes Bros. reunite for one last run and reheat the tag division with them for a bit. I know some people would probably shit on the idea of "capitalizing" on Dusty's death, but come on. I'm not calling for them to outright reference the passing of the Dream as the REASON they're suddenly a team again, but it's one of those things that just makes sense & doesn't necessarily require any actual explanation.

 

Plus it's a built-in device to get them back, get some great matches out there, and take one last stab at doing SOMETHING with Cody Rhodes. Say what you will about the Stardust shit-show, but Cody felt like a solid mid-card babyface out there alongside his brother for that six month stretch or more.

 

Rhodes Bros. vs. New Day... babyface clashes vs. PTP, and maybe even a throwaway novelty match vs. J&J Security. I'd be all over that stuff. It'd rinse a little of the Stardust stink away from Cody, and it could help reset the tag division before the Usos bounce back on the scene.

 

... And I just remembered they were trying to do something with Stephen Amell for SummerSlam. Guessing that's gone the way of the Jackass deal now though.

[DMJ]

Late to the party, but I just watched Cesaro/Cena from this week's show (never got around to watching last week's). The truth is, it really does take me 2-3 days to get through RAW - an hour here, an hour there, a day between.

 

Anyway - is anyone else of the mind that Cesaro/Cena, without the commercial breaks, may have been better than either of the Owens/Cena matches? I was a big Cesaro fan going in (but one whose fandom has cooled since it seemed there was little chance he'd ever get "The Push"), but somewhere around the 23-minute mark, I just realized if there is anyone capable of having a really great 60-Minute Ironman Match with Cena, it is Cesaro. I really enjoyed both Owens/Cena matches, but could pick out flaws here and there (the anticlimactic "outta nowhere" ending to the first, the early finisher spamming of the second), but this week's Cesaro/Cena just worked for me more. Lots and lots of impressive moves and I felt like, for whatever reason (maybe something as simple as comparable body types?), both guys submission moves looked pretty snug and realistic (something I never thought I'd say about the STFU). Even Cena complaining to the ref about the last nearfall made sense - Cesaro's shoulders were down, but Cena had an unclear, insufficient pin (JBL explained "Cena was caught in Cesaro's legs") so the ref's count was late in Cena's opinion, but justifiable to me, the viewer. Cena looked legitimately spent at the end, so I didn't see the purpose of the post-match AA to Owens, but it's not like that hurt the 30 minutes that preceded it.

 

I'd give it 4 stars and, on a PPV with no commercial breaks (the fact they cut to a break in the first 2 minutes means we really have no clue what the first quarter of the match was), I could see that being a 4-and-a-half match. One could say "It needed 5 more minutes," but those 5 minutes were there for the live crowd and we just weren't privy to them.

[WingedEagle]

Not a ton of talk about it so I don't know where consensus is, but my initial reaction was that I preferred their shorter match from last week. This was a lot of fun, but at times it felt like they were throwing stuff out there just to fill the time.

[jcmmnx]

Another thing is that the ending was never in doubt. Cesaro had the upper hand last week when the match ended so you knew that Cena was going to have to get one up on him this week. Plus there's no way they would put the belt on Cesaro a week before a heavily hyped third match between Cena and Owens on ppv. I thought the match started rough about 10 minutes in I was saying this is the worst Cena/Cesaro match I've seen. Then it got good with some cool movez, and then it went on forever with a million kickouts and submission escapes.

 

A year from now in a vacuum I would probably like it more, but having just seen several matches worked in this style I'm kinda sick of it.

 

Watching NXT this week made it pretty clear to me that Sasha is the ace of that brand. They can give Balor 45 minutes of tv time every week, but Sasha is the most entertaining and best all around act in the company by a wide margin.