Tuesday Raw Roundtable: Post-Lesnar Era Begins With Sleepy 3 Hour Show

Columns, Top Story

Raw was back with the first episode of April.

What did the Pulse Wrestling crew think of the show?

Darren Paltrowitz

There was a lot of filler in the show, which ought to provoke the usual “why is it 3 hours?” questioning.

But a few of the segments I enjoyed:

– Neville was fun. Although I don’t understand why in his second RAW appearance (we’re supposed to have forgotten the time he and Sami Zayn were in an NXT tag team match), he faced Seth Rollins. Way to take the steam out of a rising star, WWE.

– The Lucha Dragons had as good of a match as they could against A New Day (the Kofi-less incarnation). A New Day has begun a slow heel turn (finally!). Tyson Kidd and Cesaro “watched backstage.”

– The Prime Time Players had a pre-recorded backstage promo, which was a great return to form for them. They mocked A New Day and The Ascension, which implies there to be a secondary tag team storyline.

– Brad Maddox made a quick cameo, briefly appearing to interrupt Kane.

– Mizdow finally wrestled The Miz in a one-on-one match. The crowd reaction was not what I had thought it would be, although that might have been due to the match’s placement so far into the show.

– Mark Henry returned to challenge Sheamus. Sheamus is overdoing the heel thing (e.g. “This is what a real man looks like”), but luckily the crowd gave him another “You look stupid” chant.

A number of mainstays were missing this week (e.g. Dean Ambrose, Rusev, The Usos, Daniel Bryan), which either means that people got post-Wrestlemania vacations (which was why Triple H and Stephanie McMahon were said to be away), or that the undercard is being built up.

Widro

Just in case you forgot, this is what the WWE roster looks like without all the special guests. Brock Lesnar being gone was a huge hole in the show. WWE has gotten into a habit of featuring tons of face vs face matches on TV lately, and building up to a 3 way main event with all faces was a bust. Each of the three matches had no suspense leading into the finale as well. This is a good indication that 2015 is going to continue being rough on WWE diehards who watch a substantial amount of WWE TV each week.

CB

Raw really dragged tonight as the post-Mania lull has already set in.

Jonathan Widro is the owner and founder of Inside Pulse. Over a decade ago he burst onto the scene with a pro-WCW reporting style that earned him the nickname WCWidro. Check him out on Twitter for mostly inane non sequiturs