Just one day after an unpredictable and historic WrestleMania, tonight’s episode of Raw took place in San Jose, California and featured a total of eight matches. WWE announced that both the United States and Intercontinental Championships would be on the line as well as Seth Rollins and Randy Orton competing in tag team action to close out the show.
Tonight’s episode of Raw was packed with surprises, new faces and decent matches. NXT had an extremely strong presence on the show, which is a full-fledged sign that it’s time for the WWE Universe to start focusing on the future. Not only were NXT stars on display, but Brock Lesnar and Paul Heyman played the babyfaces in tonight’s episode, which was interesting, intriguing and entertaining as hell.
With fans still buzzing from WrestleMania 31, could WWE Raw pick up the ball and continue the momentum? Here are my overall highs, lows, match results and random thoughts from the March 30 edition of Monday Night Raw:
BEST MATCH
Daniel Bryan vs. Dolph Ziggler for the Intercontinental Championship and John Cena vs. Dean Ambrose for the United States Title were the two best matches of the night. Everybody has a different opinion and I enjoyed both of these matches, so it’s difficult to pick a winner for the Best Match of the night award. It was a toss-up, but I’m going to go with the Intercontinental Title match. Both Bryan and Ziggler were booked strong from start to finish and the match was surprisingly physical. Well, you know, more physical than the two’s previous matches. Bryan and Ziggler went all out and delivered a great opening bout featuring near-falls, innovative reversals and an awesome head-butt battle. In the end, Bryan delivered his Running Knee finisher to pick up the 1-2-3 and retain the prestigious belt.
WORST MATCH
From a pure wrestling standpoint, Mizdow vs. Stardust was by far the Worst Match of the night. Of course, this was just a two minute time filler in order to allow Miz and Mizdow to spice up their feud. Mizdow is incredibly over, which is always great to see, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that the match just flat out sucked.
BEST PROMO
To the surprise of no one, Paul Heyman is the winner of the Best Promo of the night award. Heyman stood tall next to his intense and bloodied client Brock Lesnar and superbly defended the Beast Incarnate after last night’s unforgettable title change. The one behind the one in 22-1 stated that Lesnar never lost the title and that Roman Reigns was the one to blame for Seth Rollins walking away from WrestleMania 31 as the champion. Heyman played to the crowd and both Heyman and Lesnar seemed to truly love the affection they were receiving from the hot San Jose crowd. Heyman ended the promo by hyping Brock Lesnar vs. Seth Rollins – which was scheduled to take place later on in the night.
Paul Heyman is the greatest talker in WWE history. There, I said it. For anybody that has a different opinion, I beg you to enlighten me in the comments section below. The man is a verbal assassin who rarely slips up or makes a mistake while speaking on the microphone. Words cannot describe just how good Paul Heyman is at his job.
MOST SHOCKING MOMENT
The Raw immediately following WrestleMania is always electric and unpredictable – which means we all expected at least one or two shocking moments. I’m going to leave this award blank so that the SEScoops readers can comment on what they thought the Most Shocking Moment of the night was.
With that being said, I feel that the winner of this prestigious award is going to be difficult to pick. My top nominations would be Paul Heyman announcing that Brock Lesnar will compete on Raw for the WWE World Heavyweight Title, Sheamus’ heel turn, Brock Lesnar’s implosion, Stephanie McMahon suspending Lesnar indefinitely, the Lucha Dragons or Neville’s debut.
