Hello and thanks for showing up to rant, rave and reflect on the latest episode of Monday Night Raw Live. Here is your host, hailing from a dark corner in the North East of England, it’s Danny Damage.
Last Week on Raw Live:
- Recap of Kevin Owens’ celebration.
- Rollins gets involved and added to the title picture by Mick Foley.
- Reigns gets in Owens’ face at the end of Raw Live.
- Foley follows and states that if Reigns can beat Owens the following week, he’ll be added to the title match at Clash of Champions Live.
#Raw Live:
Foley is out all-fucking-ready.
He plugs Smackdown’s Backlash Live PPV and their general quality, something the GM of Smackdown’s competition shouldn’t be doing. It goes from poor to shite when he introduces Charlotte.
We’re shown clips from last week, starting with Charlotte’s loss against Bayley; Dana getting a slap from Charlotte backstage followed and then ultimately, Dana tried to jump Sasha Banks during her fake farewell/I’m getting my rematch at Clash of Champions Live promo.
Charlotte instantly demands an apology from Dana, seeing as it was her fault she suffered an upset loss to Bayley last week. Charlotte says it’s either an apology or her mentor-ship ends. Dana takes the blame and says she’s sorry but Charlotte is waiting for more. Foley interrupts and mentions that he brought her out not to belittle her minion, but to discuss her upcoming title match, to which Sasha Banks’ music hits.
Sasha continues to show us her potential for teaming with Enzo and Cass with her ability to mispronounce basic words. Plus, she reckons she’s taking the title back.
Bayley’s out next saying she deserves a title shot since she beat the champion last week.
Sasha disagrees, but since they go “way back to NXT” (yeeeeeah, ages ago that was!), she knows how good Bayley is and agrees she should be in the picture, somewhere, behind herself of course.
They all bicker a bit and Foley makes a match between Sasha and Bayley to decide the matter. Charlotte turns to Dana and blames her for the whole issue and verbally degrades her some more.
Dana slaps Charlotte in the chops and gets added to the match .
#TooMuchMakeUp #TripleThreat
Bayley vs. Dana Brooke vs. Sasha Banks
Sasha scores the win when Bayley thought she’d won after hitting her Bayley to Belly on Dana, then Sasha rolled her up off her pin attempt……..with her own shoulders mirroring Bayley’s. Tut tut.
A decent, fast-paced match from these girls. Dana is still getting better, despite a few minor problems. I don’t know if her handstand corner foot-choke is worse than how you’ve got to hang on and wait to take Sasha’s hanging knees in the corner when Sasha takes her time to get up there.
At least they’re both miles away from being as shoddy as Alberto Del Rio’s top rope stomp or as obvious as Sasha blatantly having a full-blown conversation with Dana’s downstairs during their (as called by Michael Cole) “Super, super-plex”.
Cesaro picked up a win against Sheamus in their best of seven series in London last Wednesday, getting Cesaro on the scoreboard at last.
#SmugSelfBackPattingCuntStatTime
Dana tries to apologise backstage. Charlotte tells her to get her bags and storms off.
The Shining Stars are in the back attempting to sell their time shares to R-Truth.
I wish Enzo and Cass were this easily silenced. Goldust drags Truth away before he spends any money and my two least favourite Muppets appear.
Enzo challenges Epico to a match after throwing a few racial stereotypes their way. Epico accepts and allows Enzo to butcher the English language a little more.
Kevin Owens tries his best to make Tom Philips crack a smile and proclaims that Roman Reigns doesn’t deserve to be in a ring with him, that he’ll defeat him later tonight and then go on to Clash of Champions Live and shut Seth Rollins up. The camera follows him walking off and returns to Philips to see that he’s not alone.
Jericho reminds everyone of how great his new best friend is and sulks because Foley has removed Owens from tonight’s planned episode of The Highlight Reel. So instead, Jericho is going to have Sami Zayn as his guest tonight.
#BolieveInBo
Bo Dallas squashes a jobber. He’s looking tough and sinister. Good times.
Looking more and more like a beardless Bray. Braun Strowman Bolieves!
#HighlightReel
Chris Jericho’s Highlight Reel is up next. Jericho brings out Sami Zayn and sleeps while he’s waiting.
Jericho gloats about being Kevin Owens’ new best friend and laughs about Zayn being old news. Zayn corrects him and says Owens isn’t Jericho’s friend, that he’s just using him and will eventually turn on him when the time suits him.
Jericho claims jealousy is the culprit here and Zayn responds by saying that he’s shocked at how Jericho’s gone from being a six time world champion to being Kevin Owens’ bitch. Jericho jumps Zayn while doing the old “here, let me show you this text message” distraction and smacks Zayn in the head with his phone and then lays him out with a Code-breaker.
Jericho didn’t need the phone anyway, it was way too big for his pocket. Two birds, one stone.
Jericho and Zayn will face each other at Clash of Champions Live.
#BestOfSeven
Cesaro (1 point) vs. Sheamus (3 points)
Cesaro uses the rope to steal a win. They proper beat the shit out of each other in that one, again!
Strange they’re having Cesaro using dirty tactics so early on in the series, but we’ll see where it goes I guess.
Foley and Rollins backstage, discussing Reigns being in the title picture. Foley asks Rollins not to get involved in the match between Reigns and Owens later on.
Alicia Fox vs. Nia Jax
#SquashTime
Foxy starts off strong but after Nia swats her down, it just turns to a beat down on the outside. The climax of the pummelling is Nia ploughing through the time keeper’s wall with Foxy crushed in between.
#LetsPretendLastWeekNeverHappened
It’s a new day, yes it is.
Yes, that is Big E feeding people cereal from his boots.
The New Day say they burned the footage of The Old Day last week. It felt like it went on for longer than five minutes and thirty-seven seconds. They proceed with the cheap pops galore routine.
Until Gallows and Anderson show up and are looking for a scrap.
Karl Anderson & Luke Gallows vs. Kofi Kingston & Xavier Woods (w/Big E)
Xavier gets shot down with The Magic Killer. Good match. More of this. Less of last week. Thanks very much!
Tom Philips asks Roman Reigns on his thoughts going into his title match opportunity later on.
No one cares. This is evident by him FINALLY keeping it short but sweet. Ah, sweet acceptance, the final stage.
WWE Tactless Wonders Presents:
“The Man That Comes in Peace”
Jinder Mahal makes his way to the ring and takes the time to explain where he’d been before returning recently.
He says he’s been exploring and he’s found inner peace.
Jack Swagger’s music hits and my eyes roll.
Jack Swagger vs. Jinder Mahal
Mahal swears peace and acts as pacifistic as possible. Swagger drops his guard/is lured in. Mahal takes advantage. Stupid crowd nibble at that dangling carrot and chant “USA”. Mahal wins.
Swagger ignores Tom Philips backstage and breathes heavily.
Smoothest Swagger promo ever.
Enzo and Cass announce that there’s time to go for a piss before the next match.
Enzo (w/Big Cass) vs. Epico (w/Primo)
The Shining Stars steal another victory.
Kevin Owens bumps into Seth Rollins and they slag each other off.
Mick Foley breaks it up and sends Owens off for his match.
#WWEUniversalTitle
Kevin Owens vs. Roman Reigns
Owens has Reigns down on the outside and Seth Rollins appears and attacks Owens, getting Reigns disqualified.
That is, until Foley comes out, restarts the match and takes Rollins backstage for a chat and a smacked arse.
KO initially capitalises on Reigns being weakened from his assault before Rollins got involved. The tables turn and Super Reigns powers up.
As it looks like Roman is bringing the match to a close, Rusev returns.
Rusev eats a Superman Punch on the apron for his troubles, but this is just enough of a distraction for Owens to whip Reigns off the ropes and flatten him with a Pop-up Powerbomb for the win.
Owens leaves with a smile on his face and Lana barks orders from the ramp.
Rusev helps himself to a semi conscious Roman Reigns, much to the approval of the crowd.
Afterthoughts:
Good Shit:
- Dana Brooke. Good job. Get her chucked in matches with the other lasses more. She’ll get better quicker this way than by standing on the outside watching Charlotte stumble through matches. The crowd seemed rather keen for Dana to stand up for herself and she got a pretty big reaction when she walloped Charlotte in the face, but it’s possibly just the fact they wanted anyone to shut Charlotte up at this point. She’s much better as a heel I’d say, but I’d certainly detach her from Flair Jr. and give her chance to grow elsewhere, since she’s not been doing this that long really and they insist on using her on Raw Live immediately.
- Bo Dallas. Continued quality in my opinion. Always liked the dirty smirk that Bo had hidden in there while running his cheesy grin campaign. He could have always been as hypnotic as Brother Bray if given the right material to work with and not purposefully made to be annoying to the sense.
- New Day/Gallows & Anderson. More slap, less tickle, thumbs up from me. Shame they’ve kind of given away most of the PPV title match though, even if they do switch Woods out for Big E.
- Rusev & Lana. Good to see them back. From some of the pictures that Rusev was posting online, I’m surprised he bothered to come back and that his body is in a state to work again.
Bad Shit:
- Mick Foley. I know they’re trying to plug Holey Foley/The Network, but there was too much Foley again. I wouldn’t mind so much if he just popped up on the Titantron now and then while sat in his office to resolve disputes and such, but he’s not needed to be walking around and getting on camera during every angle.
- Jack Swagger. I didn’t want to see Swagger once this week, nor did I want a second helping backstage by demonstrating his out of breath, post-cum face mannerisms and then a third fucking spoonful was rammed in my gob on Smackdown too! Ugh.
- Enzo and Cass. As funny as the clap in a brothel. Begone!
- Jinder Mahal. What the fuck is this? It’s 2016 and we’re STILL pushing “the dirty, sneaky foreigner” shite? Out of all the thoughtless gimmicks/characters the WWE have got drafted up in a pile somewhere, surely they could have picked anything at random and it will have sustained a tiny bit of tact and creativity compared to this dog shit sandwich.
Ridiculously late, I know. I’ve been ill and then busy.
Apologies to both of you.
That’s okay. Your recaps are improving, week-on-week, for me, so it was worth the wait.
Cheers. Appreciated! 🙂
Man, you really don’t like Enzo & Cass.
He doesn’t Charlotte either :S
Well spotted! They bore me to tears now, sadly.
“Sasha continues to show us her potential for
teaming with Enzo and Cass with her ability to mispronounce basic
words.”
Seth Rollins and Titus O’ Neal seem to be afflicted with the same malady :S
True, but i don’t think they’re trying to be cool by doing so.