Tonight’s “new season” of Raw took place in Baltimore, Maryland and featured a total of seven matches. Chris Jericho took on Bray Wyatt in a Steel Cage match, Jerry Springer tried his best to help out the Bella Twins and Roman Reigns went one-on-one with the Viper Randy Orton in the main event.
After two weeks of lackluster programming, Raw promoted this show as the first episode of the “new season” of WWE. Not really sure how that applies and how many seasons Raw has had – but quite frankly, I don’t think anybody cares.
Throughout tonight’s broadcast, Michael Cole said “season premiere” more than “$9.99”. So with that being said, here are my overall highs, lows and random thoughts on the 9/8/2014 edition of Monday Night Raw:
BEST MATCH: Randy Orton vs. Roman Reigns was the best match of the night. Orton and Reigns told a great story in the ring, with Randy reversing virtually every move Roman threw at him. Orton is one of the most underrated workers and performers in WWE today and it’s nice to see him elevating a future star. I usually don’t do this, but I was very impressed with Reigns, who mixed up his move-set a bit and was a pleasure to watch. He hit a Suplex and a back-body drop, which is a drastic improvement. Also, I didn’t really mind the finish to the match. I thought it was quite clever.
WORST MATCH: Adam Rose vs. Titus O’Neil was the worst match of the night. Titus and Heath Slater are looking like fools right about now and Adam Rose has done nothing to impress me since coming to the main roster. I really like Titus and I’m actually a big fan of Heath Slater, hopefully they will get some sort of push in the near future.
BEST PROMO: Paul Heyman and John Cena delivered the Best Promo(s) of the night. Heyman is a genius and absolutely brilliant on the microphone and when John Cena is serious, he can match Heyman word for word as well as anybody else on the WWE roster. Cena and Heyman were entertaining and the both of them delivered a promo to be remembered for some time.
MOST SHOCKING MOMENT: I’ll play the role of a casual fan and say that the Most Shocking Moment of the night was the Authority and ring crew coming down to the ring in order to trap Roman Reigns inside of a steel cage. Seth Rollins climbed to the top of the cage and hit a beautiful cross body right onto Reigns, which was just the start of his burial. Reigns took a chorus of chair shots from Orton and even Citizen Kane joined in on the fun.
