After the yearly overly patriotic intro, we get our weekly Authority opening promo. Some things just never change huh? They run down Dean Ambrose and says he's no threat. Dean comes out, cracks some jokes and they tell him that he needs to sign the contract before his match is official. Roman Reigns came out to stand by his bro, leading Stephanie McMahon to do her best Teddy Long and book a tag team match playa. Ambrose and Reigns beat Kane and Seth Rollins when Dean pinned Seth. That's a dumb move. Dean already beat Seth a few weeks ago so there was no need for this. Just fucking pin Kane because he shouldn't be protected against your new top stars. The match was there but was nothing of note. Ambrose has until the end of the night to sign the contract. J&J Security give Ambrose shit backstage, so he attacks but ends up laying out a cameraman in the process.
Rusev comes out and he's Bulgarian again. See, he moved back home after splitting from Lana. He squashes R-Truth which was really dumb since Truth is going to be in the Elimination Chamber. Why make him look so bad? Rusev then called out Lana as we went to commercial. He came out before commercial, squashed Truth and is now technically entering his fourth segment. Lana comes out, Rusev acts like a 17 year emo boy and Lana nearly forgives him. Then, he wants her to say those three little words. His delivery on wanting her to say "I was wrong" instead of "I love you" was spot on. Lana gets pissed and they argue before she leaves. Dolph Ziggler appears atop the ramp to steal the show and Rusev's girlfriend as they kiss. Rusev delivered in this segment but it lasted too long.
Backstage, HHH goes into Dean Ambrose's locker room and has him arrested for assault. That damn soft cameraman. This is all so Dean can't sign the contract to make his title match official. In another Intercontinental Title Elimination Chamber preview, Ryback beat King Barrett. Bad booking here again. Ryback shook off a rib injury to beat Barrett. Why should I care about Barrett if he just continues to lose? In the back, the Entourage cast meets Steph and Triple H. They make some Jeremy Piven SummerFest jokes and some Ronda Rousey/Steph jokes. Moving on, Stardust faces Neville. Neville is officially facing Bo Dallas at Elimination Chamber. I guess his two minute squash of Bo on Smackdown a while ago never happened. Stardust got into it with Stephen Amell at ringside. I'd love to see Amell get more involved. He's awesome as Arrow and is a big wrestling fan. Celebrity fans are the best guest stars because they actually have a great time. Neville wins, Dallas shows up and goes after his knee.
As if we haven't seen it enough lately, Sheamus took on Dolph Ziggler next. Sheamus works the knee, only for Dolph to not sell it and for them to forget about it. Lana came out to watch, so Rusev showed up to distract. His fourth segment by the way. The distraction let Sheamus win. Rusev then attacked Dolph. So, is the Chamber winner the best of the bunch of losers? Next, we get the midcard Champion that's actually booked well. John Cena comes out, puts over the crowd and his feud with Kevin Owens. Yea, it's the same weekly shit. This took far too long. The Entourage cast came out and brought out Zack Ryder for the Open Challenge. I'm fine with this as not every challenge has to be this major deal. The hometown fans loved seeing Ryder and the match was solid. Ryder even busted out the Killswitch and a 450 splash. Cena won, raised Ryder and the Entourage cast's hands and was then attacked by Owens. Owens again stomped on the US Title. Fine segment except for the overly long Cena promo to start.
Moving on to the WWE Divas, Tamina takes on Paige as Naomi and the Bellas are ringside. Guess how the booking goes here? If you guessed Paige, the woman getting the title shot this Sunday, won...then you would be completely wrong. Tamina won after help from Naomi for some ridiculous reason. Not a good match because Tamina isn't very good, but also terrible booking. For some reason, we get a 10 on 3 handicap match next. Poor New Day not only has to defend the titles against five teams this Sunday, but now they face everyone? At least this broke down into a brawl and nobody really took the loss. It was kept relatively short and built towards the Elimination Chamber match well. I just wish they were making the Chamber matches seem like a bigger deal.
Before our closing segment, we see some EXCLUSIVE FOOTAGE that reveals Seth Rollins shoved the camerman into Dean Ambrose, causing Dean to strike him. The Authority show up to gloat about Dean being locked away and how Seth will now just get Elimination Chamber off. Roman Reigns runs out. He gets into a brawl with the Authority until the police wagon returns with Ambrose driving it. This is some Stone Cold shit right here. He and Reigns take everyone out and he signs the contract making the match official. So, this was a down Raw after three straight really solid episodes. It felt rather lazy. The booking was stupid in a lot of places and hurt the Intercontinental and Divas Title matches for this Sunday. I enjoy Rusev, but we had too much of him. I did enjoy the use of the Entourage cast. This is an example of how to correctly use guest hosts. They didn't do any lame segments, integrated themselves with the roster and didn't take away any time from the roster. As a go home show, this really didn't work. In no way am I more excited about Elimination Chamber than I was already. In fact, I may be less excited. Regardless, some of the show was enjoyable and some wasn't. I'd put this as a middle of the pack episode of Raw. 5/10.
