WWE had another new Raw on Monday, what did the Pulse Wrestling crew think of the show?
Darren Paltrowitz
Next week is the third pay-per-view (or whatever’s it’s now called in WWE speak) in six weeks, and it’s starting to feel like it’s a bit much. I’m excited for the Money In The Bank ladder match and the tag team match, but the rest of the card doesn’t excite me much.
Dean Ambrose clearly has the charisma and crowd support to be the WWE Champion, and hopefully he can avoid yet another screwy finish. Luckily the whole Authority storyline looks like it is wrapping up, but J&J Security showed tonight that are two of the better workers on the roster. And for those paying attention, yes, Heath Slater beat Seth Rollins that same way last year.
An excellent job was done with elevating Kevin Owens and NXT as a whole. Neville and Owens were impressive — Jim Cornette must be angry somewhere.
The tag team division has potential to be great so long as they keep Luke Harper and Erick Rowan away from the belts. The New Day remains excellent — Big E tapping Titus O’Neil in rhythm was a highlight.
The Divas and Intercontinental title pictures are still a bit lacking.
Unfortunately the next pay-per-view (Battleground) is one of the throwaways, as followed by Summerslam, so I’m far more psyched about the July 4th “Supercard” coming to the WWE Network.
John Turnbull
Dull opening promo from Cena saved by the appearance of Kevin Owens. Neville is getting better on the mic, but I’m not sure about his cape and loincloth combo. Great match from these young superstars as expected.
It remains a mystery to me why the Bella Twins are still employed.
Reigns MITB promo was sort of pointless as he really wouldn’t benefit from winning it. Orton vs Shamus was the same match we seen a dozen times before – hard hitting, not terrible but nothing spectacular.
Corporate Kane vs Ziggler made me wish for anyone other than Kane in the match – surely Samoa Joe could take his place as a legitimate monster?
Miz TV was notable only because it featured two runners up from previous seasons of Tough Enough and Big Show almost breaking a chair by sitting on it. Did Bradshaw just call Big Show ‘The Giant’?
Beard Brothers vs Los Matadors was pretty much a squash, finishing with a nice 3D on both Matadors.
Titus vs Big E was nothing to write home about, but New Day continue to grow as sneaky heels. Reigns vs Kofi gives credence to the theory that Kingston could be going over at MITB with Kofi looking strong throughout the match.
Rollins vs J&J was what it was, giving the stooges a bit of offense and furthering the Rollins / Ambrose rivalry.
Overall a decent episode of Raw leading into MITB.
Pat Metalhead
It was rather refreshing that they decide to skip the traditional « Authority Talks » opening and went with Owens/Cena. I thought Cena did a better Job than last week, much better actually, Owens was good as always and they did a decent job of putting the NXT belt over (where that leaves the IC belt, I wouldn’t know). The Neville/Owens match was good, not a patch on their NXT efforts but still good. Part of the problem was that commentary was basically a long Cena interview. Not sure what will happen on Sunday, but I do know one thing, Neville is struggling. He sounded boring on the mike and, while featured against champions has lost time and again. Difficult to see where he goes from here. Overall, they did what they had to, sell the Cena/Owens match and that’s not a bad thing, just bad luck for Neville I guess.
I wasn’t really in to the various MitB opponents matches, nothing was really bad but nothing was really noteworthy either. I’m not sure the Ziggler/Lana thing works either.
I must say I liked the Miz TV segment, Ryback did very good here. They’ve not really sold me on the match but they did sell me on Ryback as IC champion. Kudos to him.
I had to laugh at the Shield 2.0 segment, that was funny. The whole Authority/Rollins thing, I don’t know what they hope to achieve here, we’ll have to see I guess, but isn’t it the face character who has to overcome insurmountable odds ? I guess Tripple H/Stephanie are giving Rollins a little object lesson but still. J&J were fine in their roles, Kane actually made me laugh at times, Ambrose was his usual charismatic self, but it didn’t seem like anything was really achieved here, except for weakening Rollins position even more. Knowing that Ambrose has little chance of winning I question that decision. But hey maybe they’ll surprise us on Sunday, you never know.
I’ve been rather negative about WWE in recent times, but there are hopeful signs here and there. The problem remains the same, too many hours of programming, too many PPV’s following too close over one-another and the shadow of Lesnar hovering over all that making it difficult to have anything feel impact-full. Well, we’ll see on Sunday I guess.
Penny Sautereau (@PennyOfHedon )
I fell asleep during Miz TV and I was doing the bloody recap this week! The show started out great, dropped in quality throughout the night, and came back strong with the last two matches. All in all it left me about in the middle for MITB Sunday.
Phil
Everything that needed to be accomplished to hype Money in the Bank 2015 happened on RAW. John Cena did well on the microphone both in the ring and commentating an excellent opener in Kevin Owens vs Neville. R Truth thinking he was in the MitB match was the funniest thing on RAW in ages and everyone in that match got to perform in the ring to preview the match. Seth Rollins having the Authority teach him a lesson and getting a “Dirty deeds” from Dean Ambrose, only to have the WWE World Heavyweight Championship re-stolen from him was all quality entertainment and Jamie Noble was awesome as usual in all of this.
Great to see Harper and Rowan tearing it up as a tag team once again and here’s to hoping this actually goes somewhere this time. Strange to have this random match of them against Los Matadores with no direction in regards to the Pay-Per-View, though this is nothing to complain about.
Widro (@Widro)
There wasn’t much to Raw this week, and especially not three hours worth. It’s nice to see J&J security, probably 2 of the top workers on the roster, get a long match in with Seth. The stuff with Kane/J&J/Authority and Seth is just totally unentertaining.
The Bellas are the worst top level woman performers in WWE history and are holding back the entire division. They are terrible on promos and in the ring. They need to be gone.
