Hello and welcome, one and all.
Because I insist on gobbing off on a weekly basis and since WWE are adamant on having 9999 hours of wrestling per week (Raw being 95% of that), my usual shower of bazooka rounds has been replaced with a rather nifty sniper rifle that I’ll be using to highlight the strongest and weakest parts of the show……….or at least just my personal favourite and worst moments.
Unfurl the sails and hoist the anchor as blunt, yet constructive criticism is surely on the horizon!
It’s…….
#OneHitOneShit
The Shield’s new merchandise hit the shelves faster than the fans began cheering for Roman Reigns tonight……..which did look iffy that either of those things would happen judging by the opening segment.
As expected though, the crowd did eventually get behind Reigns as he stood beside Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins to vanquish not only the aggravating quartet of The Miz, Curtis Axel, Sheamus and Cesaro, but later in the night, they sent a message to Braun Strowman too!
This initially bore a six-man TLC match which then mutated into a four vs. three TLC match after the Strowman incident and Deano spouting something about more than three opponents being fine by him.
I like the look of this! Despite the roundabout way of putting it together, The Shield reboot doesn’t look as creatively desperate now as they must take on greater odds than how it appeared last week.
The match at TLC will no doubt be utter carnage. If I were a gambling man, I’d put money on any of the heels but Strowman eating a pin in the not so distant future.
Matt Hardy got prodded with the shit end of the stick this week on Raw.
Brother Matt was fed to Braun Strowman out of the blue and threw everything he had at the monster. Still, he could only manage to get a one-count after all that and a Twist of Fate.
Strowman brushed himself off and demolished Hardy with a Running Powerslam. He then proceeded to carry Hardy out of the arena until he was stopped by the Shield, who brawled with him and put him through the announce table.
This was an incredible scene, don’t get me wrong, but this isn’t the focus of my frustration.
Now, without sounding like I’m trying to mother and/or smother Matt Hardy, I’ve mentioned before he has a finite number of bumps left in his career and I don’t think they should be spent in matches he’s just chucked into because Jeff’s too injured to tag with him and WWE don’t want/intend to pull the trigger on Broken Matt Hardy.
Seems to me that they just got him to sign on the dotted line so that other people couldn’t profit from the delightful work he was doing elsewhere.
The rest of Raw saw the debut of Sister Abigail via Bray Wyatt. I know what we saw wasn’t perfect, but I like what they were trying to do and the story they’re telling; I’m incredibly intrigued by the development of this angle.
They’ll obviously have a difficult time trying to present Bray channelling/being possessed by a spirit and speaking with dual voices in a live/arena setting, meaning pre-recorded bits like what we saw here are pretty much their only option here.
If they do what they’ve always done with Bray and repeat the same nonsensical, yet well-performed monologues for his promos, this element too will stagnate very quickly.
They should have fun with this for a little while and then have Abigail posses one of the female roster to play the role and align with Bray.
Preferably Bayley!
Digest and discuss! Feel free to do so in the comments or via any of the means listed below.
And please check out and subscribe to my seedling of a YouTube Channel:
