“This is Bull****” – A non-WWE fan watches Raw for the first time in five years. He survived to write this
By B.J. Bethel
I was assured by other wrestling fans that the episode of Raw that aired on Monday, March 21, was a better than average episode.
I will give them the benefit of the doubt for the simple reason that I haven’t watched Raw in years. But if this was above average, I wonder how low an episode must go to be below average. Are they three-hour documentaries on regrettable history like Katie Vick? Do they toss fans off cages Foley style? I’m not sure I have the imagination to contemplate such a thing.
This brings us back to this week, the above average episode, which – to quote William F. Buckley – I had to flog myself to watch this show. It was a three-hour assault on my senses, including the most important sense of all – common sense.
I gave this show a fair shot, one that it didn’t deserve. Comparing WWE to AEW isn’t fair. One show is on the cutting edge of the industry, the other is a shadow of itself thanks to a monopoly position that allowed it to get lazy. I’m fortunate I didn’t decide to watch Raw while something regularly epic like the G1 was occurring, it would have been fair to WWE. The company is not capable of producing a product like the G1. I’m not sure it could put together a PPV that would satisfy its target audience as well as GCW.
WWE has always been the pro wrestling show for people who hate pro wrestling. Now it’s the show for people who hate themselves. A show with Seth Rollins and A.J. Styles in the main event should be easy enough to build to, but WWE finds way to make it tedious, idiotic and nonsensical.
The show revolved around one story; Seth Rollins doesn’t have a match at WrestleMania. From research, this has been a habit of recent years. Certain wrestlers don’t have set title or feuds going on, so they are left on the outside looking in. This is supposed to build some suspense if Main Eventer In Question could possibly not make the biggest PPV or the year. It’s telling how little WWE thinks of its full-time main event roster that it would tease leaving them off the show – something you can’t imagine with a Brock Lesnar or the company’s chosen one, Roman Reigns.
Rollins lost by DQ, because bad guy Edge hit Styles with a chair. Rollins goes ballistic. He’s screaming, “This is bullshit,” (I agree. But Rollins should have been chanting this throughout the show) repeatedly and said the Raw after WrestleMania won’t happen if he can’t get on the card for the big show. If Rollins could pull this off, he would be the top babyface in history in my mind, but unfortunately we know this won’t be the case.
The show has too much production, too many camera movements, too many backstage segments, too many cheesy, cringey lines from the announce crew and too little wrestling. Pro wrestling was popular in the very early days of television because it was simple to film. There are over 70 years of history of pro wrestling on TV, it shouldn’t be difficult to film it without the nonsensical camera cuts.
The show started with Steve Austin’s theme music, but it’s bait for the fans. Kevin Owens emerged dressed as Austin with a bald cap. Fans cheer, then boo. It’s cheap heat, something WWE goes to the well with too often, but Owens is good enough to make this work and build heat. It’s easy to see why Austin would love to work with Owens, he’s one of the best in the business, he’s given him permission to use his finisher and a match between the two would be something special if it were to occur. Right now we’re promised only some kind of confrontation.
Rey Misterio and his son Dominik take on Bobby Roode and Dolph ZIggler. The Miz makes an appearance and steals Rey Misterio’s mask. His son quickly grabs him a towel. This would be more effective if Misterio hadn’t wrestled without a mask for years, but it’s The Miz, we can’t ask anything too complicated of him.
The Miz grew up in suburban Cleveland and went to a sizable school district. He later went to Miami University before he was on MTV’s Real World, which helped launch his wrestling career and began his character as a dry, lifeless frat character who said he had never met an Africa American before the show. I was told by numerous classmates of his this was a lie, so obviously a pro wrestling career was a natural progression for him.
Becky Lynch was once the hottest wrestler in the business, now she’s colder than ice. An ill-timed heel turn and a feud with the talented Bianca Belair hasn’t done well for her. Watching Lynch, the women’s tag match and the 24/7 title match, WWE is quickly dropping back in the race for best women’s division. They always have the big four, and a talented group around them, but when they dig lower into the mid-card the roster has some weaknesses after all the cuts.
Why is Pat McAfee on my television? He was a punter for the Colts, and the one not referred to as “idiot kicker” by Peyton Manning. He’s jawing with Austin Theory, apparently this is a feud. McAfee is in good shape and his talk radio experience has made him a good talker. That this is sticking out is an indictment of the show.
Matt Riddle is now known as Riddle. I’m not sure if this is a setup for a Batman villain character, but it wouldn’t pair right with the stoner vibe. I remember how hated Rob Van Dam hated being portrayed as a stoner idiot. Randy Orton and Riddle defend their tag titles with a win, but Riddle gets squashed afterward. The Street Profits attack and perform one of the dumbest spots I’ve seen in a while, a double team DDT out of a Hart Attack setup that could have ended badly for Riddle. Big E broke his neck on WWE programming recently, and another wrestler was taken off in a stretcher. This isn’t ballet and there’s always a danger factor. The most protective wrestlers can hurt someone bad, but WWE has a lot of talent that looks very green and is doing things it shouldn’t be doing.
This angle surrounding the 24/7 title was the bottom of the show. Tamina Snuka has assumed Akira Tozawa as a valet, and it’s such a stereotypical disaster. Tozawa is wearing a martial arts gi and belt, he’s treated as an afterthought by Snuka. It’s almost impossible to imagine this is the same industry where Minoru Suzuki debuts in AEW and is treated as a legend and automatic main eventer.
That brings us to the problem with WWE and the problem with Raw. This is a TV show built on its own bullshit. It’s fat, happy, satisfied, lazy, bloated, slow and impossible to enjoy as a wrestling product. Rollins and Styles had a good match, but it wasn’t exactly Hangman Page vs. Adam Cole or Moxley vs. Danielson in the other company. There’s no energy, there’s no life. It’s stagnant, it’s an anachronism.
If you wanted to kill off Vince McMahon as a businessman and burn his reputation as a wrestling genius, he’s doing a better job of it himself than any of his supposed rivals like Ted Turner, which was a rivalry made up in the imagination of McMahon.
My dad worked at General Motors and I’ve been in the newspaper business at the end, when people didn’t believe the great unraveling was happening. Monopolies become monopolies because they make money despite themselves. Picking the right people and making the right decisions? Monopolies are insulated from those – until they aren’t. The company is no longer a monopoly thanks to AEW, and it’s falling behind the upstarts in gates.
Which makes me ask what the purpose of Raw is. AEW’s purpose is evident. Raw’s purpose seems to be lost, which means McMahon’s is lost, and he’s doing this all out of habit.
Hand it off, give it to Triple H if he’s healthy or when he gets healthy. Find a buyer and take the best deal you can get. Give it to Shane or Stephanie – give it to someone with some fire, and see where it can go. Right now, it’s not going anywhere, and that isn’t bullshit.