A few months ago, Cesaro and John Cena had one of the better matches on Raw this year, so I had high hopes for this one. And they delivered. While the match started off a bit slow, it really picked up near the end. If Cesaro can figure out what to do with his character exactly, he could go places because he's awesome in the ring. However, he's been in a funk lately and it continues as he suffers a loss to the WWE World Heavyweight Champion. No shame in that to be honest.
Before going to the next match, things cut backstage where Stephanie McMahon is still fuming about being arrested but she's also scared because she doesn't want to go back to jail. Randy Orton is also rightfully pissed that he still has yet to get a one on one WWE World Heavyweight Title rematch since losing the belt at WrestleMania. A reminder, he also didn't actually lose as Batista was the one who tapped. There's tension within the Authority. Paige comes out to the ring, doing her awkward skipping and says that she let her emotions get the better of her and she won't attack AJ Lee again. She still considers AJ a friend. This brings out the Divas Champion, who doesn't believe Paige. Paige makes the mistake of calling AJ crazy. AND THATS SOMETHING YOU JUST DONT DO. AJ attacks and we get a good little segment to help build the eventual Divas Title match at SummerSlam.
More promos as The Authority makes their way out to the ring. Triple H is pissed at the WWE Universe for laughing at Stephanie McMahon's misfortune last week. Stephanie plays the self defense card and says that every charge has been dropped except for the assault and battery charge. I had no clue there were other charges. She wants Brie Bella to show up tonight so they can fix the misunderstanding. A "jailbird" chant starts until Chris Jericho surprises us and comes out. Man, do I miss the Jericho/Stephanie dynamic. He sings the theme to Cops and gets the fans to join in before nearly calling Stephanie a filthy, dirty, disgusting, brutal, bottom feeding, trash bag hoe, but Triple H stops him. He makes Bray Wyatt vs. Chris Jericho for SummerSlam and Seth Rollins vs. Jericho for tonight.
Six man tag team time! Rybaxel teamed with the Intercontinental Champion The Miz against Dolph Ziggler and the WWE Tag Team Champions The Usos. This was pretty solid and fun at the very least. In the back, the NATION...OF DOMINATION or whatever Xavier Woods, Kofi Kingston and Big E are going to call themselves, are watching on a monitor. I wonder who they're scouting. Hmmm. Dolph picked up the victory for his team and things are looking like it's still heading towards Miz/Ziggler for the Intercontinental Title at SummerSlam. I would like to see Bo Dallas involved, but a one on one match would be fine too. Miz continues to excel in his new role.
THE STREAK IS OVER! THE STREAK IS OVER! First, The Undertaker and now Bo Dallas. He is no longer 17-Bo as he suffered a shocking defeat at the hands of R-Truth. Yes, I said R-Truth. Irrelevant R-Truth. But maybe Bo losing is a good thing as he attacked Truth after the match and still did a victory lap. It was a rather fun thing to happen and maybe it will lead to something better for Bo. I BOlieve, you should too.
Lana and Rusev come out now, which means that all eyes are on Lana. Also, all heat is on Lana. Nobody seems to care much for Rusev. She does her usual stuff of talking about Vladimir Putin which is still controversial in some people's eyes. She makes fun of Obama and George Bush until Zeb Colter and Jack Swagger interrupt of course. Zeb says all of the positive things about America, upsetting Lana. Swagger and Rusev brawl in a better brawl than their match from Battleground. It ends with both guys standing with their respective flags, which, despite being American and Russian flags, Jerry Lawler calls a "Mexican Standoff."
Damien Sandow comes out dressed in an astronaut suit. Adam Rose comes out and beats him in a few seconds. I don't know why. This was pointless. Moving on, we get Roman Reigns vs. Kane but instead, Randy Orton runs out and attacks Reigns. Kane appears and hits Reigns with a Chokeslam but leaves after. This allows Randy to beat the hell out of Roman, building towards their eventual match at SummerSlam. It was an impressive beatdown and Orton's "Viper" character seems to be back. It's an improvement over the "bitch" character that he played while WWE World Heavyweight Champion at the start of the year. Of course, after the commercial break we get a recap of what just happened because what's a Raw without recaps of everything, right?
The never ending saga between Fandango, Summer Rae and Layla continues as SummerLay whore themselves out to a Fandango opponent again. They come out dressed as matadores I guess with Diego and El Torito. We get another relatively quick match that ends with a Fandango loss. I wonder where this is heading, if anywhere. Maybe Fandango gets a new dancer? I hear that Eva Marie chick has a background in ballroom dancing. Also, El Torito gets a kiss from Summer Rae.
Stardust and Goldust cut yet another backstage promo. These are rather interesting and keep me entertained but I wanna see Cody Rhodes and Goldust wrestle dammit. Hurry up and put them in the ring again. That leads to some Divas tag team action as Natalya teams with Naomi against Alicia Fox and Cameron, who haven't become the new Funkadactyls like I suggested a few weeks ago. This was your basic Divas match but Noami surprised me by showing off a new submission move that forces Cameron to submit. So we have this move, AJ's Black Widow, Paige's PTO, Natalya's Sharpshooter, Emma's Emma-Lock and Sasha Banks' Boss Lock as submissions from the Divas division. I like.
The main event of the program was a dream match of mine as Seth Rollins faced Chris Jericho. I didn't expect a clean finish as I figured that the Wyatts or Dean Ambrose would interfere. After a good, but disappointing bout, sure enough, the Wyatts arrived on the scene. They beat up on Chris Jericho to help promote SummerSlam. It was what you'd expect it to be. Surprisingly there was no Dean Ambrose as he was on a "promotional tour". He did wrestle in the dark match and he will be on Main Event against Alberto Del Rio tomorrow so that's fun.
The last segment of the night was between Stephanie McMahon and Brie Bella. This was surprising because ladies don't often get the opportunity to close Raw. Stephanie admits that getting arrested humbled her and that she was wrong for taking out her anger on Nikki Bella. I hate Brie Bella promos because she has an awful voice and pretty poor acting skills. She wants a match with Stephanie at SummerSlam and nothing else or she won't drop the charges. Stephanie says that she hasn't had a match in over ten years and she's a mom now. Brie won't budge so Stephanie fake cries and accepts. She slaps the taste out of Brie's mouth and knocks her off the apron before saying that at SummerSlam, she will make Brie her bitch. OH SNAP! Brie gets up and they have a CATFIGHT that Joey Styles would approve of. Finlay, Joey Mercury and Jamie Noble all rush out to break things up as Raw closes.
Well that show built towards SummerSlam pretty well. The matches, besides Cesaro/Cena, weren't that great but it did it's job by being entertaining and making me want to watch SummerSlam at least a little more. Until next time, follow me on Twitter @the_kevstaa.
No comments:
Post a Comment