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Colette Arrand

Heath Slater

Wrestling Review: WWE Survivor Series 2014 (11/23/14)

November 24, 2014 by Colette Arrand 1 Comment

Sting Triple H Survivor Series 2014

Yes, Sting. But we’ll talk about that when it happens. I mentioned in my review of Raw this week that I was officially excited for Survivor Series because, for the first time since WrestleMania XXX, I had no idea what to expect. Haphazardly, Team Authority vs. Team Cena had become this strange battleground where anything could happen. Anything. And then I read the results of SmackDown! and learned that Team Cena would be fired if they lost. Hahaha, no way. So without the bit of drama where the winner and the loser isn’t pre-determined, it fell upon the participants of the main event to make the match exciting despite the foregone conclusion that threatening John Cena’s career presents. Hence Vince McMahon’s presence at the beginning of the show, the pay-per-view that means more to the aura of Vincent Kennedy McMahon—Mr. McMahon to all of us—than any single event in the man’s professional life. When Vince McMahon shows up at Survivor Series, it’s because things are happening. Here, he’s setting up the rules of engagement. If Team Authority wins, Team Cena is fired, whatever. But if Team Cena wins, Stephanie McMahon and Triple H are gone for good, and the only person who might bring them back is John Cena. This is a weird caveat to add to this contract that apparently changed between Monday and today, and opens up yet another way that WWE might turn their franchise heel, which they won’t, but the opening promo with McMahon and his children and John Cena is, if nothing else, a promise that things are moving forward, changing in a way that they haven’t since April, when everything felt so new and uncertain and exciting. This whole time, it’s like WWE has been recovering from Daniel Bryan’s neck injury. Tonight’s the night they figure it out and make good on all the people who’ve decided to scam the evening’s event with the WWE Network’s free preview month or return to struggling for some direction until Bryan’s return.

The Miz and Damien Mizdow

WWE World Tag Team Championship Title Match — Goldust and Stardust (Champions) vs. Los Matadores (w/El Torito) vs. The Miz and Damien Mizdow vs. The Usos: You can tell that Survivor Series is a big deal tonight, as two out of four of the teams involved in this match come out with new gear. Los Matadores are wearing more opulent bullfighter outfits, and Stardust’s onesie features red trim and facepaint. Stardust starts the match against Fernando (finally named!), and hisses at El Torito at ringside. JBL speculates that Fernando is really Rob Van Dam because he hits a leg sweep. Miz tags in surprisingly and gets a two on Fernando with a roll-up, but the Matadores quickly take over. Diego tags in and hits a senton for two and continues to take the fight to Miz. Mizdow sells everything, including taking a bump over the ropes when his partner is thrown from the turnbuckles, and is easily the most popular dude in the ring. The gimmick where Miz teases a tag to Mizdow but doesn’t do it is the most effective heat The Miz has gotten in years, if not ever. Stardust and Jey Uso go through their well-established Usos/Dust Brothers stuff, but the crowd wants to see Mizdow. So they don’t. But Miz gets back into it with a Matador and Mizdow continues miming The Miz, so it’s all good. Miz finally tags Mizdow in after a round of BOO and YAY chants for Miz… but Goldust tags himself in and Mizdow is right out. Goldust and Stardust take the fight to one of the Matadors, who have been working under these hoods for a year or so now and are still the most generic tag team to’ve ever been given a million dollar gimmick. Stardust responds to the crowd’s chanting for Mizdow by saying that they really want him. So they get more Goldust and Stardust vs. Los Matadores. The Matadores try to act like they matter, but man, I feel pretty bad for the Colons. Goldust and Stardust do this weird, nonsensical sunset flip/German suplex combo that nets a two because Miz and Mizdow get involved. Los Matadores take over after a series of teased tombstone piledrivers ends up in a very pretty tornado DDT. Jimmy Uso tags in after a two count and starts whaling on Goldust. The Usos are so good at what they do that their bland characters don’t matter. Goldust powerslams Jey and gets a two count. There is one powerslam in wrestling that’s better than Goldust’s, and that belongs to Randy Orton. The Usos hit their FLYING USOS, MAGGLE spot, then Stardust hits a dive, then El Torito hits a dive and nearly dies because nobody can quite handle him, then the goddamn Matadores do some dives. Finally, the one Matador who didn’t dive ends up getting caught by Goldust on the top rope, and its Los Matadores and Goldust and Stardust doing a tower of doom spot. Jey Uso, who is legal, does a Superfly splash, but Miz tagged him just before takeoff. Mizdow tags Miz and makes the cover. To rapturous applause, Mizdow gets the three. Winners: The Miz and Damien Mizdow via pinfall. Grade: B

Really, Damien Mizdow’s story is about as miraculous as things get in WWE these days, as his go-nowhere character officially become the WWE’s breakthrough character that everybody wants to see more of. Where they go with this I have no idea, but watching the fans cheer for Mizdow while booing The Miz has this incredibly fresh, unique dynamic to it, somewhat reminiscent of how the fans got behind Kane and Daniel Bryan, effectively making Daniel Bryan a star. Of course, Bryan’s gimmick wasn’t that he was imitating Kane, so again, who knows where this will go. Probably farther than the Adam Rose vs. The Bunny angle, which is extended backstage via the two playing with action figures. Heath Slater and Titus O’Neil remember that they’re a tag team and show up to make fun of the two. Adam Rose calls them “two party poopers out to crash our party,” and Titus says “yeah, one of y’all stink.” Did you know that you have to be an experienced television writer to write this stuff? Adam Rose claims to be the hero of the Exotic Express, which is is because that’s his gimmick, and Titus O’Neil asks if he meant “gyro,” because putting Adam Rose on a spit, cooking him, and carving him up for lunch sounds more pleasurable than watching him play with action figures. Adam Rose challenges Slater Gator  to a tag match against himself and The Bunny. “You’ll find out why they call me a God,” he says. “What,” O’Neil replies. “You’ve been hanging out with Yeezus?” Titus O’Neil is the very best.

Survivor Series 2014 Divas Match

Survivor Series Match — Paige, Cameron, Summer Rae, and Layla vs. Natalya (w/Tyson Kidd), Naomi, Emma, and Alicia Fox: I have no idea how they put these teams together. I guess they drew them from a hat. Paige and Fox have their issues, of course, so it’s good to see that going. Paige hurling her ring jacket at Fox as she enters the ring is about as heated a moment as the WWE Divas are allowed to have. Cameron and Naomi used to be partners, but they split, so it makes sense to see them on opposite teams. Summer Rae, Layla, Natalya, and Emma are all, to the best of my knowledge, faces, but a Survivor Series match needs at least four people on each team to work and most of the women WWE employs don’t get screen time outside of Total Divas, so I guess you have to know what’s going on there to know why anything is happening. I don’t watch that show and it’s months old by the time it airs, so I can’t imagine any issue from it taking precedence during this match. Tyson Kidd gets a “NATTIE’S HUSBAND” chant, which is good. I’m glad to see that a gimmick of his is finally getting over. Paige and Natalya start the match off, which is also good, because it’s the only combination I want to see beyond Paige/Fox and Paige/Emma.

Nattie hits Paige with a double underhook suplex and follows with a baseball slide to the outside. When they get back into the ring, Paige drills Nattie with a forearm and tags in Layla. Layla goes for a leg drop, but Natalya rolls out of the way and tags in Emma. She does a Mr. Perfect necksnap on Layla, who kicks out at one. Emma, I guess, has a clumsy gimmick now. That’s how they’ve decided to interpret her awkward dancing gimmick. She and Layla exchange some slick roll-ups for two counts. This reminds me a bit of the Vickie Guerrero Invitational Battle Royale from WrestleMania XXX, where every woman in the ring went at it as hard as they could though they were competing against the audience’s shock that The Undertaker lost. Layla hits Emma with some kicks, but Emma kicks out. Emma becomes the focus of Team Paige while JBL brings up AJA GODDAMN KONG because sometimes he is not a monster. Jerry Lawler has never heard of AJA GODDAMN KONG because his brainpan is full of Smucker’s jelly. Fuck him. Team Paige wears Emma out, and it’s awesome because physicality between women is what should be happening in a wrestling show. She and Paige make their way to the turnbuckles, and Emma hits a superplex. Paige tags Cameron in, and things are about to get interesting. Emma’s pretty good, but Cameron might be the worst wrestler in the history of World Wrestling Entertainment. The crowd, waiting for AJ Lee to wrestle before chanting “CM PUNK,” chant “WE WANT MIZDOW” because men are horrible monsters, like JBL but with no redeeming qualities. Emma tries to make her way to the corner and does. She tags in Naomi, who kicks her ex-partner in the head and climbs to the top rope. She dives off and hits Cameron with a crossbody, but nearly eats it on the landing. That’s something about Naomi that I can’t help but notice every time I see her wrestle—she’s incredibly athletic, but so far that has not translated to her being a good wrestler. She puts herself at risk far too frequently. She takes Team Paige out, but this lets Cameron get back into things. Naomi hits Cameron with a wheelbarrow stunner, but Layla breaks up the pin. It’s early, but there are no eliminations. This might end up being the longest women’s match of the year.

Summer Rae gets into the ring, as does Emma, and Emma takes Summer Rae out. Natalya takes Paige out, then Cameron tries to hit Natalya with a bulldog but can’t because she is just awful. Still, Natalya takes the invisible bulldog with gusto because she’s the best woman on the roster. Naomi rolls Cameron up and pins her, and the worst wrestler in the world is gone. (Cameron is eliminated.) Paige looks concerned but shouldn’t be. Summer Rae takes over for Cameron and can be charitably described as being better, at least, than her partner. But barely. And maybe only because Cameron didn’t have much time to do anything. Maybe she’s worse and I don’t know any better and should be thankful. An awkward collision sends Summer Rae to the ground, and she backs away from Naomi screaming. She gets kicked in the face anyway. Rae gets the advantage and splashes Naomi’s arm, which is just weird. Why do that? She tries again and Naomi moves her arm, so Summer Rae crashes into the canvas. Womp womp. Naomi tags Natalya in, but Summer Rae has fighting spirit and clears Natalya’s team out. Naomi tags herself back in and gets real serious, bulling Summer Rae to the ground a few times before she starts dropkicking her. Summer Rae sells these like she has no idea where she is at all. Maybe she doesn’t. Everybody is trying really hard, but part of the problem plaguing any effort at presenting women’s wrestling seriously on WWE television is that it has been treated as an opportunity to reset between exciting things and is rarely presented as an exciting thing itself. That’s what’s happening in this match. Sure Summer Rae is flopping around awkwardly, but it’s more interesting than hearing the same facts about Jerry Lawler’s terrible and ancient Survivor Series teams get dragged out as a talking point for the eighth year in a row. You have eight wrestlers on the screen right now. Maybe talk about how hard they’re fighting to get noticed in a landscape that would otherwise ignore them. Also during this “fun banter,” Michael Cole calls Joey Abs of the Mean Street Posse “Jimmy,” so I’m done with him forever.

Alicia Fox starts wearing out all three members of Team Paige, and it’s honestly pretty awesome until she tries to get a “CHICKEN” chant started. Summer Rae tags in Layla, who is quickly taken down and manhandled by Fox. Fox is one of those performers who I never thought much of, but she’s come a long way over the past few years. She suplexes Layla with a bridge, but Layla kicks out. Layla hits a springboard crossbody in the corner, but Alicia hits her with a tilt-a-whirl backbreaker and pins her for the elimination. (Layla is eliminated.) Paige gets into the ring immediately and starts beating Fox up. She then rather stupidly tags Summer Rae in, and she is quickly overwhelmed and taken back to Fox’s corner. It’s 4-2 in favor of Team Natalya (or Fox, I guess? They should go back to giving teams goofy names), and it’s Natalya who comes in. She clotheslines Summer Rae and kicks her three or four different ways, but Summer Rae manages to make the tag after Paige lays into her with a kick of her own. Summer Rae continues stinking it up. I have no idea what her character is or why she does what she’s doing and just want to get to the part where Paige takes on four women by herself. Emma comes into the match next and takes it to Summer Rae. Cole is super excited for just about everything Emma does, which is good because she might still have a future after the incident where she accidentally shoplifted something. She puts Summer Rae in the Muta Lock and gets her to tap out. (Summer Rae is eliminated.) Finally, it’s Paige against everybody. The fans want to see Paige win because they’ve done a good job of building her with nerds like me. Paige looks like she’s going to bail, but Emma catches her. This is a mistake though, because once they’re back in the ring Paige clobbers her. She headbutts Emma and stomps her in the corner. Emma’s hope spot is to grab Paige’s boot, stand, and use Paige’s leg to hurl her to the ground. It’s awesome. Natalya tags in and goes for a bodyslam, but Paige slips out and drills Nattie with a superkick. Natalya reverses Paige’s attempt at a short-arm clothesline into a German suplex throw across the ring. Natalya tags in Naomi, who goes for a split-legged moonsault, but Paige gets her knees up and catches Naomi on the chin. Paige stumbles into Alicia Fox, who decks her. This sends Paige reeling to the center of the ring, where Naomi leaps and hits her with the Rear View, which is the terrible, ass-centric name they’ve given her leaping hip check finisher. Paige starts getting up, and Naomi locks her into a headscissors before driving her head into the canvas. That’s the kind of thing that should be her finish. Awesome looking move. She makes the cover, and that’s it. (Paige is eliminated.) Winners: Naomi, Alicia Fox, Natalya, and Emma via pinfall. Grade: B-

Had Paige gone through all four members of Team Natalya, it would have been the WWE Divas division equivalent of Ric Flair running through the roster at Royal Rumble 1992. But they needed to start building contenders for the Divas Championship who aren’t Paige or one of the Bellas, and this accomplished that handily. Beyond Summer Rae and Cameron, everybody here looked good. Tyson Kidd takes Nattie’s spotlight as she celebrates, which is awesome. Way to build two things at once, guys. On the kickoff show they redebuted Fandango, which, yes please. I’m a huge fan of heelish dancing white dudes, and Fandango is the best of that rather limited bunch. He has new theme music, which is too bad, and a new dance partner in Rosa Mendes. He beat Justin Gabriel, which is just a thing that you do when you wrestle Justin Gabriel. He didn’t even take off his shirt. But hey, he’s still got his leg drop, and that rules. Also, when he pinned Gabriel, he held his arm to the mat like they were dancing. Give Fandango all of the titles. They also brought Bad News Barrett back. He was injured, but honestly, with his character it’s a mystery why he ever had to leave television. Have him stand at his ridiculous podium and insult people. Done deal. But now that he’s back he can go about doing that and elbowing people in the face. It’s all good. The all-star panel of experts discuss what they’ve seen so far. Booker T is wearing an amazing suit and scarf. Alex Riley is a boring man who exists. Paul Heyman is Paul Heyman. The way he looks just being there, pissed off to be alive, is great. They ask him what he thinks about the main event, and he sells it by reminding us that Cena, in addition to tonight’s match, also has a date against Brock Lesnar coming up. They promise Vince McMahon and the winners of the match on the post game show, but that’s just a joke everybody because there is no post game show. It’s all in your heads.

Dean Ambrose vs Bray Wyatt

Dean Ambrose vs. Bray Wyatt: The promotional video makes the build-up to this match look much better than it was. The image of Bray Wyatt clinking a tin can against the bars of a jail cell like some old-time drunk in a Western? Priceless.Regardless of this feud’s failings, there’s still a big fight feel for this one. Bray Wyatt is even wearing a new shirt for the occasion, a lovely pattern of vines and sugar skulls. Wyatt and Ambrose stare each other down, then start hammering each other. Bray has the weight advantage, so he takes over early, but Ambrose has got that fire and comes right back. The two continue to brawl until Ambrose surprises Wyatt with a clothesline. They go outside the ring, and Bray tries to put Dean back in the ring, but Ambrose will not be denied, rolls out while Bray has his back turned, and hits another clothesline. Ambrose climbs the apron, then dives off with a forearm shiver to Wyatt’s jaw. Ambrose gets Wyatt back in the ring and hits him with a sliding clothesline, but Wyatt quickly takes over from there, catching Ambrose sleeping with his brutal flying body block. This nets a two count. Ambrose manages to gain the advantage again when Wyatt wastes his time in the corner, cutting him off with another forearm. Wyatt goes to the outside and Ambrose goes for a slingshot plancha, but Wyatt sees it coming and uppercuts his falling opponent. He sends Ambrose into the ring steps, then stomps his hand on them. He puts Ambrose back into the ring and headbutts him to the mat. After a snap suplex, Wyatt nails Ambrose with his senton and wastes some time before going for the cover. He gets a one and hooks Ambrose up into the full nelson. Ambrose breaks it by grabbing at Wyatt’s fingers and wrenching, which Wyatt sells tremendously, screaming and clawing at Ambrose’s face. Ambrose ducks a few clotheslines and goes for a cross body, but Bray Wyatt is twice his size and just stands there, trucking poor Dean in the process. He dumps Ambrose to the outside and chases after him. He goes for a clothesline, but Dean Ambrose has the same idea and both men go down. The referee starts a 10 count, but neither that spot nor anything leading up to it has made the match feel that such dramatic intention has been earned. At the count of nine, both men miraculously recover from staggering around like a couple of drunks and make it back into the ring.

Having reset, Ambrose knocks Wyatt down a few times by checking him, then checks him in the turnbuckles and follows up with a bulldog. Ambrose mocks Bray Wyatt by striking the dude’s favorite yoga pose. He sets up for the Double Arm DDT, but Bray slips it and runs for the ropes. Ambrose meets him with a knee to the gut. Ambrose charges at a stunned Wyatt, but Bray recovers and catches Dean in the set-up for Sister Abigail. He’s holding him loosely though, so Ambrose slips out and goes for a roll-up. A fan in the front row holds up a sign that has the number two magic markered on it, and that’s what Ambrose gets. He gets up, then sidesteps a charging Wyatt, who ends up on the ring apron. He ties Wyatt up in the ropes, then hits him with a running dropkick. With Bray hanging over the middle rope, Ambrose climbs to the second turnbuckle and hits Wyatt with a guillotine leg drop.  That’s always been a favorite move of mine, and I’m glad to see it make a comeback. Wyatt kicks out. Ambrose climbs to the top rope, but takes too long; Bray meets him with another uppercut, which staggers Ambrose. Wyatt climbs up after him and does a few clubbing forearms to Ambrose’s back, but Ambrose refuses to be suplexed down. He headbutts Wyatt and hits him with a Dusty Rhodes bionic elbow. With Wyatt back in the ring, Ambrose goes for a double ax-handle smash, but Wyatt catches him for a sambo suplex. Ambrose slips it and goes for his rebound lariat out of the ropes, but Wyatt steps aside and catches Ambrose with the the suplex he’d just missed. Ambrose kicks out of it, though. Wyatt follows with a senton from the second turnbuckle, but Ambrose moves out of the way. Ambrose takes him over for a crucifix roll-up and gets another two count. Wyatt recovers by chopping Ambrose in the throat. Ambrose is shoved into the ropes and returns with his lariat. He climbs to the top rope, no wasted motion, and comes down on Wyatt with an elbow drop, which is unique because Ambrose does it to dudes while they’re standing. It’s a good looking move, regardless of whether Ambrose is doing it to one guy or a crowd. JBL and Lawler say that they’ve never seen it before. They saw it, oh, every week on Raw for a month when Ambrose came back from shooting that movie. It’s worth a two. Ambrose follows Wyatt into the corner and goes for a traditional ten-punch, but Wyatt hooks him for a powerbomb. Ambrose punches Wyatt to the point that Wyatt has to throw him off, so Dean runs off the ropes and Wyatt turns around and levels Ambrose with a wicked looking clothesline.

Bray Wyatt clotheslines Dean Ambrose

Wyatt follows Ambrose to the floor and dumps him (softly) on the ring steps with another sambo suplex. Wyatt picks Ambrose up and deposits him in the ring, but only gets a two count for his effort. Wyatt can’t believe it and starts looking distraught that he can’t put Ambrose away. He calls for a microphone and gets it. He asks Ambrose why he continues to fight when he could have just joined him in ruling the world or hanging out in the woods or whatever. They’re both special. He apologizes, but Dean has chosen his path, and that path is to get socked on the jaw for not staying down. Wyatt goes under the ring and grabs a couple of chairs. He slides them into the ring, but Ambrose intercepts one while the referee pushes the other away, and Wyatt seems to have made a critical error. Wyatt gets on his knees and asks Ambrose to club him. The referee threatens to disqualify Ambrose, who shouldn’t care about things like that because this is a blood feud. Wyatt takes Ambrose’s stalling as a sign that maybe he’s reconsidered and takes the opportunity to extend the olive branch. Really, it’s a sign that you’re not allowed to hit people in the head with chairs anymore, so with Wyatt on his feet again, Ambrose hits Wyatt in the gut and on the back with the chair, and that’s it. Winner: Bray Wyatt via disqualification. Rating: C+

Woof. I think I had high expectations on this based on a few things: The magnificence of every Shield vs. Wyatt Family trios match from early in the year, and the fact that Bray Wyatt is almost exclusively a big match character. This was trying to be a big match, but in the end it was just an exchange of moves; one guy does something, then the other guy does something, and they both continue doing something for twenty minutes. None of that something included a story until the very end, and that story was “Wait until next month, folks.” We’ve been waiting for next month with Dean Ambrose since The Shield dissolved. Like in January when they tried to shift focus from Daniel Bryan to Batista by putting Bryan in a feud with the Wyatts, all this is doing is killing Ambrose’s momentum while leaving a lot of questions about Bray Wyatt’s tenability as a long-term property unanswered. The difference is that Ambrose isn’t Daniel Bryan—he’s not quite that singular an entity—and he is unlikely to be rescued from this by relentless crowd support. After the match, Ambrose double-arm DDTs Wyatt onto a chair. He leaves the ring and finds a table beneath it, because yeah, tables should just be under the ring, why not? He sets Wyatt up on the table in the ring and elbow drops him through it. He grabs another table, which is under the ring in case they decide to have a mid-show convention. He puts it on top of Wyatt, just lays it there, and smacks the table a few times with a chair. Then he starts throwing chairs into the ring. Some fans chant “ECW,” which, no. Ambrose finds more chairs under the ring and throws those in, too. He teases leaving, but turns back to the ring, goes under the apron, and pulls out a gigantic ladder. Next month’s pay-per-view is called Tables Ladders and Chairs, but I can’t imagine this is related. Ambrose sets the ladder up in the ring. He climbs it aaaaaaaaaaaand… his music hits, so he poses. Wait until next month, folks.

Backstage, Team Authority stand around like they’re waiting to take a family photo:

Team Authority Survivor Series

Triple H is worried that his team might lose, so he gives them a corporate pep talk. He says that the people who will benefit the most are his team. They’ll get more title matches, money, and so on if they win. Stephanie McMahon is on the verge of tears saying that they can’t lose. She is the queen of heels. Triple H says that this is a defining moment, a moment when everything will change forever. That’s probably not true. He says that if The Authority lose, his team won’t be fired, but that they’ll wish they were. Whoever takes over, he says, will make sure that their lives are a living hell. Champions will lose their titles. People who haven’t been champion never will be. He doesn’t know who will take over if he’s gone, so that’s pretty presumptuous. The only dude on the team who is really staked to Triple H and Stephanie McMahon is Rollins, when you think about it. Regardless, Rollins making a big frowny face while Rusev rubs his United States Championship is awesome stuff. Rusev also looks super excited to yell “FIGHT!” over and over again. Rusev is my favorite.

Adam Rose and The Bunny vs. Heath Slater and Titus O’Neil: There are people in the crowd with signs for The Bunny. They must be plants. Rose and The Bunny are still having their issues about who gets to do Adam Rose’s entrance. Slater Gator’s music hits, and it is a horrible, wondrous beast of yelling, barking, and crazy guitars. The Bunny requests to start the match and he does, against Heath Slater. He goofs around, so Adam Rose tags himself in. Rose lectures The Bunny, turns around, and is kicked in the mush by Slater. That gets a two count. Slater tags in Titus O’Neil, who picks Rose up and hits him with a few backbreakers before throwing him across the ring. The Bunny looks on in horror, as we all must, and Titus assaults Rose in the corner. The referee separates them, and the space gives Rose a means of fighting back. Rose tags in The Bunny, who leaps over the ropes and catches Slater with a dropkick on his way in. He continues to catch Slater with dropkicks while Jerry Lawler worries that folks who might be seeing their first pay-per-view might be confused about why there’s a bunny wrestling. The Bunny flapjacks Slater, who I’m not a fan of but who I feel deeply sorry for right now. JBL makes references to Monty Python and the Holy Grail’s killer rabbit by its full name, and also Harvey, because what the hell else are you going to do while a dude dressed in a bunny costume is wrestling an intentionally shitty match, reacting to his stuff with a sense of manchildlike wonder? The Bunny continues to do dropkicks, and now we’re talking about his being the literal party animal on The Exotic Express, which is the worst thing. The Bunny pins Heath Slater while Adam Rose looks on as if bearing witness to a nightmare. I’d screencap his face, but I just don’t care. Winners: Adam Rose and The Bunny via pinfall. Grade: F

The Bunny celebrates while Adam Rose looks on, his hand out for a tag that will never come. It appears that The Exotic Express has a new god. After this, they show a trailer for a movie featuring Larry the Cable Guy and Santino Marella, which might be the only thing worse than continuing the beef between Rose and The Bunny. It’s a sequel to Jingle All the Way, which hurts like a fucking knife in my back. Back live, Roman Reigns joins us via satellite, wearing a leather jacket and wet hair because he wants to look like a tough wrestler, even in rehab. Michael Cole asks Reigns  how his recovery from a hernia is going, and Reigns gives us an update. It’s typical sports blah blah blah, but Reigns isn’t mumbling and is trying to be emotive when he speaks, so there’s some progress. He says that if he was there, he’d cock his fist and “make it rain in that bitch.” Woah, dude. Relax. JBL brings him back to reality quickly and asks how he’ll feel once Seth Rollins wins the main event and increases the power of The Authority. Reigns says that he has no love lost for Rollins, but that it also doesn’t matter who has the power in WWE. He says he’s coming back in a month. Backstage, Erick Rowan doesn’t hear any of this because he’s playing with a Rubik’s Cube:

Erick Rowan Rubik's Cube

Team Cena, minus its leader, talks about how important tonight’s match is for them. It is, after all, a match they need to win if they want to keep their jobs. Cena shows up to give everybody a nice pep talk. He says he’s going to try hard to make sure nobody gets fired. Ziggler is on fire though. This is a big moment for him, one of the biggest of his career in a legitimate way, and when he goes through his babyface fire routine, I won’t lie: I get kinda tingly. Ryback is hungry. Rowan looks up from his Rubik’s Cube long enough to offer that the only thing his team needs to do to survive… is win. That gets Cena super pumped.

WWE Divas Championship — AJ Lee (Champion) vs. Nikki Bella (w/Brie Bella): Brie Bella’s Seattle grunge & E! reality star get-up is hilarious and terrible. Nikki continues to dress like a cheerleader. Brie has two more days left under the employ of Nikki, per the stipulations of their match at Hell in a Cell. Nikki, I guess, is trying to leverage that into the Divas Championship, but the story, with AJ thrown in, has been so convoluted that it’s hard to tell how that’s going to happen. AJ Lee skips her way down to the ring and she and Nikki get a main event introduction, which happens for women’s matches never. I’m all for it. Brie gets up on the ring apron, holding the Diva’s Championship. This distracts AJ, who goes over to push Brie away, so Brie grabs AJ and sexually assaults kisses her.

AJ Lee Brie Bella kiss

AJ turns around from this and Nikki drills her with her forearm, which continues to look like a convincing finish. Nikki picks AJ up, nails her with the Rack Attack (also a good looking move), and that’s it. Winner: Nikki Bella via pinfall. Grade: F

I mean, seriously. I guess it plays into the storyline between Brie and Nikki and ties into, oh, the whole history of AJ Lee’s character, but this was terrible, especially if, as rumored, this is it for AJ in wrestling. This, they assert, is almost exactly what happened when AJ kissed Daniel Bryan at WrestleMania. I guess, only the kiss was consensual and not a horrible ruse? Brie presents Nikki with the title, pleased as punch. I guess she’s cool being her sister’s slave, and the neckbeareded weirdos of the internet can now go hunting for pictures of Brie Bella kissing AJ Lee. I’m looking forward to Brie trying to justify this when she inevitably turns face on Raw. They announce that Dean Ambrose and Bray Wyatt will meet in a Tables Ladders and Chairs match at TLC in December. What a shock.

Triple H Pedigrees Dolph Ziggler

Survivor Series Match — John Cena, Dolph Ziggler, The Big Show, Ryback, and Erick Rowan vs. Seth Rollins (w/Triple H, Stephanie McMahon, Jamie Noble, and Joey Mercury), Rusev (w/Lana), Mark Henry, Kane, and Luke Harper: If Team Cena wins, The Authority (that’s Triple H and Stephanie McMahon) are no longer in charge of running WWE shows. If Team Authority wins, everybody on Team Cena is fired. This is going to be a long one, a full hour. A lot of ins and a lot of outs. The build for this was haphazard, to the point that Erick Rowan was a last-minute audible when Sheamus fell to an injury (thinking about it, Cesaro would have been better, if not equally nonsensical). I also don’t quite get why Triple H isn’t wrestling this match for himself. Given Kane’s less-than-sterling record this year, he’d probably be a better choice. It takes some time to introduce all the players, which is perfectly fine because Survivor Series matches are all about gigantic masses of humanity. Team Authority is out first, then Team Cena. Mark Henry and Big Show start the match off, with Mark Henry threatening to whoop everybody’s ass. Big Show stares him down. He charges at Big Show and gets KO punched right in the jaw. Show goes for the cover, and immediately Team Authority is down a man. (Mark Henry is eliminated.)

Triple H and Stephanie look on shocked while the crowd goes nuts. A big warning shot across the bow of Team Authority, though really, why does it always have to be poor Mark Henry? Team Authority play mind games with Big Show, acting like Harper is going to get into the ring, which allows Seth Rollins to sneak attack Big Show from behind. It’s to no avail though, as Big Show is on fire. All of Rollins strikes do nothing to the giant, who swats him around like nothing. Rollins tags Kane in, and now it’s Big Show vs. Kane in the 1,000th chapter of their never-ending saga. Big Show wears Kane out and tags in John Cena, who is also a frequent enemy of Kane. Cena starts his evening by hitting Kane with his big match dropkick. Kane bails and tags in Luke Harper, so Cena tags Erick Rowan. The crowd really gets into this, which is a shock. I don’t remember Rowan being anything more than the afterthought of the Wyatt Family, but here he is now, solving Rubik’s Cubes and getting gigantic pops from the crowd. Lord knows why he wants to fight Harper, but hey, I’m for it. But Seth Rollins tags himself in. As a reward, his head is grabbed and immediately smashed into the turnbuckle. He also body slams Rollins and stomps around the ring impressed with himself. Rowan tags in Ryback, who throws Rollins to the mat by his head. Ryback muscles Seth Rollins around, slamming him from turnbuckle to turnbuckle before military pressing him to the lights. Rollins slips out, though, ducks a clothesline, and gets back body dropped. Luke Harper hits the ring and gets decked by The Big Guy. Ryback then lifts Harper up and holds him for a few seconds before finishing a vertical suplex. Very impressive strength. Harper tags out to Kane. He momentarily gains the advantage on Ryback, whips him into the ropes, and gets Thesz pressed and splashed for his trouble. Then Kane tags out to Rusev. Yes, please. They throw punches at each other until Rusev cuts Ryback off with a knee to the gut. Rusev starts kicking at Ryback, then runs off the ropes. Ryback surprises Rusev with a massive spinebuster. I guess you shouldn’t run at (or stand in front of a running) Ryback. The Big Guy hits the Russian with the Meathook Clothesline, but can’t follow up with the Shellshock. Rusev, from behind, shoves Ryback into a big boot from Kane, and the whole match breaks down.

Survivor Series 2014

With everybody fighting and Ryback on the mat, Seth Rollins hits him with the Curb Stomp and bails before the ref can see him. Rusev is still the legal man for Team Authority, and he pins Ryback after hitting him with a running kick to the jaw. (Ryback is eliminated.) We reset with Big Show and Rusev. Rusev backs Big Show into the corner and charges to the other side of the ring. He rushes back and gets caught with a big boot. Big Show calls for the chokeslam, but Rusev wiggles out of his grip and tags in Luke Harper. He fairs no better against The Big Show until he’s able to catch him by surprise with a huge dropkick before tagging in Seth Rollins. He kicks Big Show in the face and gets a two count. He quickly tags in Kane, who dropkicks a seated Big Show for another two. Kane tags Harper back in. Harper locks Big Show in his gator roll, and The Authority is now firmly in control of this match. But Big Show is too big, and once he’s in trouble he’s able to hit Luke Harper with a back suplex and easily tag in Dolph Ziggler. He takes Harper off his feet with a pair of clotheslines and follows with a Stinger splash in the corner and a neckbreaker. Ziggler hits an elbow drop, attacks Rollins, runs at Harper, but gets planted with a black hole slam. Harper tags Rollins in, and Rollins wears Ziggler out in the corner with a flurry of stomps. He then tags out to Rusev. He stomps Rollins some more before covering him for a two count. Ziggler gets kicked in the face and watches as Rusev switches over to Kane. Kane continues to stomp Ziggler. He picks him up and deposits Ziggler in the middle of the ring with a sidewalk slam. It gets a two. Kane works Ziggler over some more and brings in Luke Harper. Harper steps on Ziggler’s face while Cena yells some stuff to his teammate about never giving up. Harper picks Dolph Ziggler up for a suplex, then drops him and jacks his jaw. It’s worth a two count. Rusev comes back into the match and brings his foot down across Ziggler’s back. He manhandles Ziggler, who is completely spent, shoving him around the ring and kneeing him. Rusev talks trash to Ziggler in Russian, and Jerry Lawler says “speak English, Rusev” because you can be xenophobic and still be a good guy in WWE. Rusev picks Ziggler up and presses him against the ropes. From there, he proceeds to knee Ziggler in the gut until the referee forces him to break with a five count. He backs off, still carrying Ziggler, faces down Team Cena, and throws Dolph down with an overhead slam. That gets a two count, and Rusev brings in his captain, Seth Rollins. Ziggler tries to make it to his corner, but can’t. Rollins picks him up from the ground and punches him in the face. Rollins takes some time to praise his team, and this allows Ziggler to fire back. Rollins catches him, though, and uses a flatliner to drive Ziggler’s face into the turnbuckle. Ziggler kicks out, and Rollins brings Rusev back in. He grinds Ziggler down with a chinlock. Ziggler creates some space with a jawbreaker and tries to leap over Rusev, but Rusev catches him. Ziggler uses his momentum to plant Rusev with a DDT. He goes for the cover on Rusev, but Luke Harper breaks it up, only to be met by John Cena and an Attitude Adjustment. This brings Kane into the ring to chokeslam Cena. Kane turns around and is met with a Big Show chokeslam. Rollins, though, springboards off the top rope and kicks Big Show in the face to stymie Team Cena’s momentum. But he forgets Erick Rowan, who lifts Rollins onto his shoulders by his throat. Rollins punches to counter the powerbomb and is thrown off. Rollins stuns Rowan with a kick to the sternum, but is back body dropped over the top rope and onto a pile of bodies. Rowan isn’t paying attention, and that allows Rusev to nail him with his big leg lariat. Dolph Ziggler and Rusev are still legal.

Ziggler gets up and tries to hit Rusev with the Fameasser, but Rusev counters by powerbombing Ziggler over the ropes and into the combined mass of Teams Cena and Authority. Rusev rolls out of the ring and starts to dismantle the Spanish announcers’ desk. He does the same to the American one, then pushes a bunch of rolly chairs out of his way. He grabs Dolph Ziggler by the hair and drags him to the Spanish table. He climbs the American one and tries to hit Ziggler with a running splash, but Dolph moves out of the way and Rusev crashes through the table on his own! In the ring, the referee is administering a 10 count (in a Survivor Series match, the regular rules still apply), and are up to six before anybody starts moving. Rusev is out cold. Team Authority try to threaten the referee, but he continues doing his job. Ziggler’s crawling, using the ring steps to get up to his feet. The count is at seven. Ziggler rolls in at nine! The Authority try to roll Rusev in, but they’re a couple of tiny dudes and can’t get the job done, so Rusev is counted out! (Rusev is eliminated.) Rusev wasn’t pinned nor did he submit, so he’s still technically undefeated by anything but his own hubris. Kane takes over for Rusev and throttles Ziggler, who is still the legal man. He picks Ziggler up by the throat and goes for a chokeslam, but those are no sure thing in 2014. Ziggler manages to escape and tag in John Cena, safe from elimination at last.

Rusev Dolph Ziggler

Cena gets into the ring and goes shoulder block, shoulder block, powerbomb, all in the usual fashion. He sets up for the Five Knuckle Shuffle and hits that, too. Kane gets up and eats an Attitude Adjustment, but Seth Rollins interjects himself before Cena can make the cover, kicking him in the gut and nailing the Curb Stomp. Cole reacts like he’s seen Hulk Hogan turn his back on WCW, which is a bit much. This brings Erick Rowan into the ring, and he finally faces off against Luke Harper. Rowan quickly gains the advantage and beals his former partner into the turnbuckles. Harper gets up, just in time for Rowan to hit him with a splash in the corner.Kane tries to get involved, but Rowan knocks him off the ring apron. That’s enough of a distraction for Harper to get back into it, and he jumps on Rowan’s back and puts him in a sleeper hold. Rowan backs him into the turnbuckles, clears Rollins from the apron, ducks a Harper clothesline, and catches him on the rebound with a spin kick! Kane tries to chokeslam Rowan but can’t. It doesn’t matter though, as Rollins flies in from out of nowhere to kick the big man in the face. Harper hits his discus clothesline and pins the man he once considered his brother. (Erick Rowan is eliminated.) Big Show, watching from the outside, looks distressed to see Rowan go. He climbs back up to his corner. John Cena’s already in the ring, still suffering after Rollins’ Curb Stomp, and this makes him the legal man. Big Show scans the ring and enters, facing down Harper, Rollins, and Kane. He gets ready to throw his knockout punch, but looks wary. Cena is still out. Big Show is all alone. Show encourages Cena to get up, and Cena does, slowly. When he gets to his feet, Big Show decks Cena with the knockout punch! It’s a complete shock to everybody, including Team Authority, and Seth Rollins wisely scrambles over to cover the captain of Team Cena, who is out cold. (John Cena is eliminated.) I think this is brilliant. Big Show was the anchor of Team Cena early, but he’s watched Ziggler get beaten to hell, Cena get abused, and Rowan taken out by team tactics. He was all for Cena heading into this match, but anybody who has watched Big Show knows that the guy is essentially a mercenary. He looks out for himself. So with Cena staggering and the whole of Team Authority daring him to do something, he jumps ship. He looks heartbroken about it (after all, The Authority nearly bankrupted him), and Triple H looks the most shocked of anybody. Big Show extends his hand to Triple H, and the COO of WWE shakes it. Big Show then leaves the ring, and is functionally counted out. (Big Show is eliminated.) Stephanie McMahon rubs it in Cena’s face because she’s amazing.

That leaves Dolph Ziggler. He’s in there against Kane, Luke Harper, and Seth Rollins. All over but the crying. Triple H and Kane wake Dolph Ziggler up because they’re a couple of nice guys. Kane helps Ziggler to his feet and sends him caroming into the barricade surrounding the ring while Cena takes the long walk back to the showers. Kane puts Ziggler back in the ring and starts working him over. Ziggler kicks out of a pin attempt, but it’s academic from here as Kane tags out to Harper. He walks over Ziggler and tags in Rollins. Seth Rollins, of course, is an asshole, so he makes a point of showing Dolph Ziggler how many partners he has left: zero.

Dolph Ziggler Seth Rollins

Rollins tags Kane back in, and Kane puts Ziggler up on the top rope. He uppercuts Ziggler, as is his custom, and follows him up, looking for a superplex. Ziggler fights him off, though. He surprises Kane with a cross body block of the top rope, but it only results in a two count. He superkicks Kane, catching him flush, and follows up with the Zig Zag! Just like that, it’s two on one! (Kane is eliminated.) Luke Harper comes into the ring and crushes Ziggler with a big boot. Ziggler rolls out of the ring, but he’s not safe from Harper. Luke Harper runs off the ropes and dives outside the ring, catching Ziggler with a tope suicida! Harper puts Ziggler back into the ring and follows him in with a superkick of his own. Ziggler kicks out! Harper follows with his huge sit-out powerbomb, and Ziggler manages to kick out of that, too! Harper can’t believe it, and he stalks around the ring frustrated. This lets Ziggler surprise him with a flash roll-up, and just like that we’re down to a one-on-one contest! (Luke Harper is eliminated.) Rollins doesn’t let Ziggler rest of long, though, as he’s back in the ring, and back at stomping away on poor Dolph. He throws Ziggler out of the ring, then hurls him into the barricade. Rollins does it again, but the fans are chanting “LET’S GO ZIGGLER,” and anything is possible. Rollins puts Ziggler back into the ring, but Ziggler catches him in a roll-up! Rollins kicks out, but as soon as he’s back to his feet, Ziggler scores with a DDT! Rollins kicks out again. Triple H and Stephanie McMahon continue to do an amazing job at ringside. Momentum shifts back to Rollins, who hits Ziggler with a powerbomb into the turnbuckle. That’s a two count. Rollins punches a defenseless Ziggler a few times before climbing to the top rope. Ziggler meets him up there, but is shoved off. Rollins goes for a Curb Stomp from the top, but Ziggler avoids it and hits the Fameasser! Two count! Every single move here gets a massive ovation, as it should. This is a great story. This is a great match, one of the best of the year, which has been full of amazing multi-man matches.

Ziggler goes for the Zig Zag, but Rollins has the ropes and shrugs him off. Joey Mercury and Jamie Noble try to get involved, but Ziggler manages to fight them off. Rollins goes for a splash, but Ziggler avoids it and hits a rebounding Rollins with the Zig Zag! He goes for the cover… and Triple H pulls the referee out of the ring! The zoom in on Ziggler’s cover, minus the referee, is brilliant. They somehow cut back to this shot while Triple H is punching the referee, though, so that’s less good. Mercury and Noble get in the ring and assault Ziggler while the fans in the arena cry out in frustration. Ziggler fights them off again, though, and sends them crashing into Stephanie McMahon, who falls off the ring apron and into Triple H. Ziggler superkicks both of Rollins’ goons, but Rollins ducks the kick intended for him and does another buckle bomb. Rollins goes for the Curb Stomp, but Ziggler moves. ZIG ZAG! The place is going berserk, but there’s no referee! One slides into the ring and gets to two, but Triple H slides in and attacks this referee, too! He throws the referee out of the ring and begins assaulting Ziggler himself. Triple H is a collage of muscles and sweat-drenched business clothes—that’s how hard he’s been working as a manager. Triple H does Ziggler in with the Pedigree. He rolls Ziggler over and drags Rollins on top before calling out another official. It’s Scott Armstrong, the “crooked” referee who has been in The Authority’s pocket when they needed him. He starts to count… and a crow cries out from the TitanTron:

Sting WWE Survivor Series

IT’S STING! And, leaving aside his new entrance music (which isn’t good) and his insane hairline, Sting’s sauntering out to a WWE ring for the first time is about as cool, as iconic, as things get in 2014. Everybody freaks out about this. Everybody. Stinger punches Armstrong and enters the ring. He stares at Triple H, who can’t believe what he’s seeing, and just those two men, standing in the ring together, is enough for the crowd to launch into chants of “HOLY SHIT!” and “THIS IS AWESOME!” For once, they’re not needlessly exaggerating. Sting and Triple H and the announcers let everything pass in silence. This is a goddamn moment. And then Triple H tries to attack Sting and…

Sting Scorpion Deathdrop Triple H

…all of the sudden it’s 1997, and I’m nine years old. Sting didn’t exactly disappear when WCW folded in 2001, but it feels like he did, wrestling for TNA Wrestling in front of crowds that, at their largest, were a couple thousand strong. This is an NHL arena with 20,000 people in it. There’s significance to Sting’s every action. And what he does is hit Triple H with the best Scorpion Deathdrop of his life, drag Dolph Ziggler on top of Seth Rollins, and watch as the referee counts the pinfall. (Seth Rollins is eliminated.) Winner: Dolph Ziggler via pinfall. Grade: A

Now, here are several caveats to how goddamn exciting Sting is, and how great I found the match. First, for how goddamn brilliant the closing sequence between Ziggler and Rollins was, it would have been amazing for one of them to finish the match. Second, while Team Cena vs. The Authority wound up being good, all on the back of this match, the fight against Triple H and his goons was Daniel Bryan’s, and it sucks that injuries prevented him from slaying the dragon. But what this match accomplishes is a lot. Dolph Ziggler has arrived. Seth Rollins, if he wasn’t already, is legitimately one of the top heels in the company. Everybody involved has something to do in the aftermath of this match, even Mark Henry, and everybody left the show having put in some of the best work of their lives. Watching Triple H and Stephanie McMahon realize what happened, Triple H looking defeated and Stephanie wailing like a banshee, there’s an air of unpredictability hanging over WWE right now. That’s when wrestling is at its best—when anything can and will happen, and does so without breaking its own rules or logic. Survivor Series had two absolutely dreadful matches and one that should have been much, much better. But in the end, the main event hit the reset button on what’s been an agonizing season of programing, and kicks off the road to WrestleMania in ernest. I like where it’s going. I don’t know where it’s going. I like that I don’t know where it’s going.

Rating:

ghost starghost starghost starghost star half

 

Filed Under: Reviews, Wrestling Tagged With: Adam Rose, AJ Lee, Alicia Fox, Bray Wyatt, Brie Bella, Cameron, Cody Rhodes, Damien Sandow, Dean Ambrose, Dolph Ziggler, Dustin "Goldust" Rhodes, Emma, Erick Rowan, Heath Slater, Jamie Noble, Joey Mercury, John Cena, Kane, Lana, Layla, Los Matadores, Luke Harper, Mark Henry, Naomi, Natalya, Nikki Bella, Paige, Rusev, Ryback, Seth Rollins, Stephanie McMahon, Sting, Summer Rae, Survivor Series, The Big Show, The Miz, The Usos, Titus O'Neil, Triple H, Vince McMahon, Wrestling Reviews, WWE

Wrestling Review: WWE Raw (11/17/14)

November 19, 2014 by Colette Arrand Leave a Comment

WWE Team Authority

Last week, the WWE inexplicably decided to turn Ryback heel and face within the span of the evening, shortly after bringing him back to a surprisingly loud face reaction. Luke Harper stepped into Ryback’s spot on Team Authority, though, so their Survivor Series team is set at the beginning of the show as Seth Rollins, Kane, Mark Henry, Rusev, and Harper. All of the heels. It would have been more interesting, perhaps, if Team Authority was the actual Authority: Rollins, Kane, Triple H, and the security duo of Joey Mercury and Jamie Noble. But that would make The Authority decided underdogs, and only John Cena is allowed to overcome the odds. So Raw begins with Triple H, Stephanie McMahon, and their assembled superteam addressing the fans, covering the evolution of WWE authority figures. Triple H points out, quite accurately, that it’s odd that Vince McMahon gets support from the fans when he once ruled the WWE with an iron fist, doing his damnedest to suppress what the fans wanted so he could run the company in his image. Now, he says, that’s what he and Stephanie McMahon are doing; the evil emperor has beget the evil empire. Triple H says that, without them, WWE would quickly become WCW. I mean, Vince McMahon could come back and run the place, appoint a new General Manager, or we could do away with the long dead, buried, exhumed, and beaten corpse of the evil authority figure for good, but it makes plenty of sense that the world ends for Triple H if he’s not there running it. It’s what he’s been gunning for his entire life, he got it, and he’s never letting go. Like all of Triple H’s raw-opening promos, there’s a lot of good logic and subtle heel work—Stephanie McMahon even quotes Walt Whitman in relation to Seth Rollins—but it’s slow and noticeably long. The best part is that Luke Harper has dropped his horrible faux-swamp accent and is his own dirty, sweaty man. Oh, and Ryback isn’t on a team. My dude the BIG GUY comes out on cue with a BIG GUY WEIGHTLIFTING BELT and has something to say.

Winner of all the fashion awards.
Winner of all the fashion awards.

Ryback’s weird charisma is still more evident in his facial tics and mannerisms than on the microphone, but they’re finally giving him a chance to speak. It’s smart, as if they’re learning from the mistakes WCW made in not evolving Goldberg’s character at all during his 173-0 winning streak. Kane continues his good work as a sycophantic corporate stooge in his halfhearted apology to Ryback while Stephanie McMahon cues up footage from last year (WOAH, LAST YEAR IS A THING THAT HAPPENED) where Cena says Ryback doesn’t have a dick. Very, very smart. If I were Ryback and had to sit through half-hearted Cena comedy, I’d probably decline to join his shitty team, too. Ryback continues to assert that the only team he plays for is his own, and you can hear individual people in the audience groan in displeasure because yeah, it’s stupid to rebuild Ryback as a monster face and then have him waffle on whether or not the dude who lives to fight is going to actually fight. Triple H praises him for being a coward and promises to destroy Team Cena. He does so by announcing Luke Harper vs. Dolph Ziggler for the goddamn Intercontinental Championship.

WWE Dolph Zigger vs Luke Harper

WWE Intercontinental Championship Match – Dolph Ziggler (champion) vs. Luke Harper: They’ve been building to this via videos of Harper’s eyes going crazy, and by having Harper deliver a knocked out Ziggler to the feet of Triple H and Stephanie McMahon at the end of last week’s episode. Seth Rollins is on commentary and Ziggler is none too pleased to hear that his title is on the line. Harper has an absolutely incredible look to him if you can get beyond his jeans and wifebeater outfit (which is what he wore on the indies, too). There’s something incredibly menacing about a gigantic man who enters a fight with a look of serenity on his face. Ziggler gets taken out by Noble and Mercury before the bell rings, and Rollins hits him in the face with the Money in the Bank briefcase. It’s about decimation, you understand? Ziggler struggles around while the referee checks on him. Dolph gets to his feet and demands the referee start the match. Oh yes, babyface fire. The bell rings and Harper hits Ziggler with a big boot (which misses by a mile, but whatever), but Ziggler kicks out at two. Harper picks Ziggler up and drills him with a sit-out powerbomb, but Ziggler kicks out of that, too. Rollins can’t believe it on commentary, nor should he. Harper goes for another boot to Ziggler, who is in the corner, but Ziggler moves out of the way and Harper goes flying over the top rope and to the floor. Back from commercial, Harper has the advantage despite that setback, hurling Ziggler to the ground by his hair. Harper picks Ziggler up for a suplex, then sets him down and punches him in the jaw. It’s all Harper as he maintains his advantage on the ground, headlocking Ziggler and gator-rolling him around the ring. Ziggler’s quickness allows him a flurry, which culminates in a fameasser (no idea what this “famouser” business is) for a two count. Harper catches a superkick and turns it into a black hole slam for another two count. Ziggler is kicking out of a billion things that look like finishes. Harper goes for his discus lariat and Ziggler hits a superkick for another two! Harper goes for another powerbomb, but Ziggler punches his way out of it. Harper throws Ziggler off, nails him with the discus clothesline, and gets the win! Winner: Luke Harper via pinfall (New Champion). Grade: B

Luke Harper Intercontinental Champion

Under different circumstances, that would have been a huge match, but we’re building to a pay-per-view and it’s otherwise just nice to finally have some new blood holding the Intercontinental Championship. Luke Harper is the first member of the Wyatt Family to win a championship, which is just odd to think about given how great those three were together. Harper shakes Rollins’ hand, settling whatever Wyatt/Shield beef may have existed between the two, and Rollins curbstomps Ziggler. Everybody poses over Ziggler’s corpse with their titles and briefcases and whatnot, and nobody blames Ziggler for being stupid enough to take the championship match despite his obvious injuries. The announce team gets hype about “Grumpy the Cat,” because nobody knows how to transition in and out of serious segments to comic relief.

The Kofi Kingston New Day promo plays. Lord knows why. But hey, Kofi Kingston gets to speak! Backstage,  The Miz and Damien Mizdow make a pitch to Grumpy Cat, who responds as one expects a cat to respond to a human being: with silence. I’m not sure why this is a popular thing and hope that it’s appearance on Raw means that our long national nightmare is over. Damien Sandow continues to steal the show as Miz’s stunt double. And then the Exotic Express comes out because we need to kill this crowd dead.

Adam Rose vs. Tyson Kidd: The Bunny steals Adam Rose‘s entrance, and this makes Rose angry. This is a rematch from last week, when The Bunny cost Adam Rose everything by going to a frog splash for unknown reasons, which distracted Rose long enough for Kidd to get him in the Sharpshooter. Cole continues to stick up for an adult male in a terrible Halloween suit, calling him a “pretty good athlete in his own right,” which we’ve seen zero evidence for. JBL rightfully mocks this proclaimation. Rose wrestles angrily, kicking the stuffing out of Kidd, but he admonishes The Bunny for breathing and Kidd takes over. Oh, Natalya is there ringside because marriage is his gimmick, but Kidd isn’t the focus here. Rose hits a spinebuster and gets a two. The Bunny starts flirting with Natalya. This distracts Rose (because he is an idiot) who ends up in the Sharpshooter again (because he is an idiot). Rose calls for The Bunny’s help (because he is an idiot), but The Bunny is hitting on Natalya so hard he misses it, so Rose taps out. Winner: Tyson Kidd via submission. Grade: D+

They don’t go anywhere with Kidd and Natalya’s estranged marriage because I guess a man in a bunny costume isn’t exactly a threat to cuckold a pro wrestler. Rose tries to attack The Bunny, but the dude gives Rose the slip and starts humping him from behind. He then hops away, displaying some of his natural athleticism, and pantomimes humping on the stage. And then we get a video of people buying tickets for WrestleMania. The show so far tonight is a good reminder that WrestleMania tickets almost always seem like a crapshoot in November. Daniel Bryan does his YES! chant, which hopefully means his shoulder is good. Please let it be good. Please.

WWE Dean Ambrose vs Bray Wyatt

Bray Wyatt comes to the ring, his way lit by thousands of cell phones. Dean Ambrose vs. Bray Wyatt is the match I’m most interested in at Survivor Series, so it’s good that they’re going to be in the ring before then—last week’s pre-taped promos were not satisfying at all. Wyatt preaches to the crowd about love, loss, and danger. Poor Dean Ambrose. Minus Harper and Erick Rowan, Wyatt is still a commanding presence on the microphone. He explains his logic in his usual circular way (always on a vague mission of mercy, that Bray Wyatt) and offers Ambrose a chance at salvation so long as he chooses to follow him. Dean Ambrose replies from the back. He’s sick of hearing Bray talk. Instead of charging the ring and fighting, he keeps responding to all the things he’s tired of hearing about. Oh wait, it’s a video recording, and Ambrose is actually in the arena. Bray looks around for Ambrose, who flies into the ring and starts flailing away at him. This year has proven that there is nobody better at making a brawl look wild and out of control as Dean Ambrose, who manages to split his lip. The brawl is brief because they want you to sign up for the Network and watch the match that way. The announcers say that Ziggler was carried out from that match earlier, which might have been a good thing to show on screen. What do I know?

WWE Ryback vs Cesaro

Ryback vs. Cesaro: Poor Cesaro makes his entrance during the commercial break. His task tonight is to lead Ryback to an acceptable showcase match, and I’m pumped because it’s my favorite wrestler vs. my ironic favorite wrestler, even though I know what the outcome is going to be. Cesaro and Ryback go through a chain wrestling routine before Ryback presses the advantage, body slamming Cesaro and hitting him with a splash for two. Cesaro responds with a European uppercut and a suplex, but Ryback gets up first. Nobody at the announce desk notices this because John Cena is Hulk Hogan and Raw is WCW Monday Nitro in 1995. Ryback throws Cesaro to the mat by his head and suplexes him on the rebound. This gets a one count. Cole is kinda worried about the succession plan should The Authority lose, and Cesaro wakes him up by hitting Ryback with an exploder suplex. John Cena is backstage, watching this match on television for some reason. Cesaro continues to work Ryback over, but Ryback gets a Thesz press and plays basketball with Cesaro’s head. This is decent, as good as a Ryback match gets, but the crowd is dead even when Cesaro surprises Ryback with a powerbomb out of the corner. Cesaro double stomps Ryback, gets a two count, and transitions into a headlock. Cesaro deadlifts Ryback into a body slam and takes time to admire himself, which gives Ryback some hope, but this match is all about seeing if Ryback is capable of working from underneath a heel, so Cesaro gets more offense, more than he’s gotten in the past month. Ryback gets clotheslined over the top rope, and when we come back after the break he’s coming back from a headlock. Jerry Lawler calls Cesaro his first name (Antonio), and my heart flutters. Cena continues to watch this match, so the conversation flows back to him and his quest to complete his team. Cesaro goes for a double axe handle, but Ryback shrugs off the weak blow and hurls Cesaro across the ring with a belly-to-belly suplex. It’s all Ryback from there. He shoves Cesaro down, gives him a spinebuster, and is momentarily frustrated in his attempt to hit the Meathook Clothesline. Ryback hits a splash from the second turnbuckle and powerbombs Cesaro shortly thereafter, all awkward muscle, and gets a two. Cesaro slips out of the Shellshock and hits a beautiful German suplex! He keeps the hold locked, but Ryback elbows out of it and Cesaro staggers to the corner. Cesaro dodges Ryback, who charges into the turnbuckle and stumbles back into a second German suplex. Cesaro keeps the waistlock on and hits a third, then brings Ryback up again for a fourth! He bridges into a pinning attempt, but Ryback kicks out at two. Cesaro goes to the top rope and dives off with a perfect Shawn Michaels elbow drop and gets another two. Zero fucks given by the live audience, even for the ridiculous comeback move from Ryback seconds after the elbow drop:

Ryback vs. Cesaro

That nets Ryback a two count and an opportunity to hit the Meathook Clothesline. Cesaro counters with an uppercut, then his pop-up uppercut, but his upset bid is stymied when Ryback kicks out. Cesaro goes for the Neutralizer, but the time he takes cracking his neck in preparation for the deadlift is all the time Ryback needs to get him up into Shellshock, but Cesaro slips out of that and gets a two count with a roll-up! Ryback ducks a clothesline, hits one of his own, and catches Cesaro with the Shellshock for the three. Winner: Ryback via pinfall. Grade: B

I thought everything here was solid. Cesaro is one of the three best wrestlers in the world and is capable of putting on a clinic with anybody. That’s what the last three or so minutes of this match were: An incredible display of power move after power move, with a little bit of sweet science thrown in because Cesaro is just too good for words. At the end of the day, Ryback shows he can hang after a year in the wilderness, and Cesaro gets a good showing on Raw. Like everybody else, I’d love it if Cesaro were at the top of the card, but I’m not worried about him at all. They know they have a future fixture in the main event in Cesaro and they can pull the trigger on him at any time. Ryback is being given a second chance with the roster depleted, and his push is more of a now-or-never kind of deal. Backstage, Renee Young asks John Cena about what he was watching on television. Cena, decked out in Hulk Hogan colors, talks about how everybody’s future is on the line. That’s dubious. Cena’s looking forward to the contract signing. Renee wants to know if Ryback is on Cena’s team, but Cena knows he’s on Team Ryback. He seems pretty sad about this, but he told the man a year ago that he had no dick. You reap what you sow, brother.

Rusev vs Heath Slater

Rusev vs. Heath Slater: This is a non-title match because Heath Slater is involved. Rusev, who is being booked as the biggest babyface in the history of wrestling but is heel because he’s not from around here, gets actual thumbs downs from the fans sitting ringside, like this is a show being taped in front of a live studio audience at Walt Disney Studios. There is no limit to the awesomeness that is Rusev. Rusev flexes a bunch and kisses his title, because an asshole bad guy shows how much he loves the championship he won fair and square. Before Heath Slater can make it out to the ring, Lana talks about the disrespect shown to Vladimir Putin at the G20 Summit. I suspect a lot of people in the crowd knew what she was talking about. Lana talks trash about Kim Kardashian breaking the internet, calling her our “Socialite Queen” before saying that no American woman compares to her “ravishing figure,” which is really out of character, but whatever. She says she has her own topless photo to show the crowd that will have “all of you American men drooling.” The crowd goes along with her when she asks if they want to see it, and are rewarded thusly:

Rusev Lana Vladimir Putin topless

The sad, straight men in the crowd shake their heads in disappointment while Lana calls them pathetic, because she is the best. This brings out Heath Slater, who is dressed like Apollo Creed in Rocky IV. He cuts a pro-America promo on his way to the ring while JBL gets the gag, calling Slater “The Prince of Monte Fisto,” which I want on my gravestone. Slater takes off his jacket, revealing a sparkly vest! Slater calls Rusev a son of a bitch, and Rusev superkicks him right in his stupid face. He stomps Slater in the back, locks on the Accolade, and that’s it. Winner: Rusev via submission. Grade: B-

Rusev celebrates in front of the Russian flag while Slater crawls around on the mat in his rad vest. I realize I’m giving a really high grade to a really short match, but as a segment that was terrific, as every Rusev/Lana segment is. Grumpy Cat is still hanging out with The Miz and Damien Mizdow backstage. Miz is desperate to do a film with Grumpy Cat. Erick Rowan shows up wanting to play with Grumpy Cat, sporting a Reichsadler on the pocket of his shirt. Rowan steals the stuffed Grumpy Cat Damien Mizdow was holding and wanders off. Nobody knows what the hell to do about this.

The Big Show vs. Sheamus: The Big Show comes out for a match against an unnamed opponent, but is met by Stephanie McMahon. Steph has been watching WWE’s fictive documentary series Monday Night War and chastises Big Show for being billed as Andre the Giant’s son, because it’s never too late to make fun of that garbage. Stephanie McMahon points out that The Big Show, despite his size and skill, has always been in someone else’s shadow. She wants Big Show to join The Authority, but should have thought about that before spending the summer making him cry. Her offer is to induct Big Show into the Hall of Fame as an active competitor. He knows the Hall of Fame is a gimmick, brother, but he turns her down. This brings out Sheamus, who calls Stephanie “Mrs. Haitch,” which rules. He’s proud to be part of Team Cena and he can’t be bought either. She wasn’t offering, fella. Stephanie tells Sheamus that he’s not an American citizen and that she might, y’know, just lose his visa and get him deported before Survivor Series. She then books a match between Show and Sheamus, saying that the winner of the match has a chance to win a shot at the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. The two do some friendly grappling in silence. That breaks down quickly though, as Big Show and Sheamus both have quick tempers, and the two get to clubberin’ each other around the ring. Big Show back body drops Sheamus over the top rope and hurls him over the crowd barricade. After the break, Big Show signals for the Chokeslam, but Sheamus fights out of it and clubs Big Show’s chest a few times, getting a two count after a knee drop. JBL is hyped on one of these men wrestling for the title, but it’s more important to Jerry Lawler and Michael Cole that they put that aside and fight for John Cena. Big Show maintains his advantage, eventually locking Sheamus in a very cool-looking inverted figure four leglock.

Big Show vs. Sheamus

All of this is pretty good, but slower and less important than the marquee matches they’ve had in the past, and the crowd just is not helping. Sheamus makes his comeback on Big Show, but is cut off by a big boot. Sheamus rolls out of the way of an elbow drop and goes to the top rope. He leaps off, but Big Show spears him out of the skies. Big Show goes for another Chokeslam but Sheamus gives it the slip and hits him with White Noise for a two count. Big Show catches the Brogue Kick an hits his Chokeslam finally, getting a two for the effort. Show climbs to the middle turnbuckle, but Sheamus catches him and lifts Show onto his shoulders, dropping him back to the canvas. With both men down, Rusev and Mark Henry hit the ring. Rusev kicks Sheamus on the jaw and starts kicking away at Big Show, and it appears that neither man will be getting a shot at Brock Lesnar’s title. Stephanie McMahon is a cruel mistress. Winner: No Contest due to outside interference. Grade: B-

Outside the ring, Mark Henry puts Sheamus through the announce desk with the World’s Strongest Slam. Rusev watches, then puts Big Show into the Accolade. It was a set-up all along, dammit. The crowd comes alive to chant for John Cena (which, wow!), but John Cena stays in the back, watching Rusev put Big Show to sleep. What a friend.

AJ Lee Nikki Bella Brie Bella

Brie Bella vs. Nikki Bella: Brie Bella skips out to the ring to AJ Lee‘s music, wearing her clothes, and this has Jerry Lawler very confused because the apparently he can only tell women apart by the clothes they wear. Nikki Bella comes out, and we have an “exhibition match.” AJ Lee comes out non-plussed by Nikki’s mind games and reports to the wrecked commentary table. The fans in the audience chant “CM PUNK” because they’re mutant scumbags. Nikki does some jumping jacks in the ring and gives her sister an arm drag. AJ compliments Brie’s choice of clothes, but doesn’t sound nearly as impassioned about what she’s doing as she did last year. Honestly, that’s understandable. She does a better job talking about the Bella feud than the WWE has with a slew of announcers, writers, and video packages though, so there’s that. Nikki hits Brie with a series of backbreakers and taunts AJ. She tortures her sister, pulling her around the ring by the hair,  but AJ distracts Nikki, allowing Brie to roll her up for the surprise victory. Winner: Brie Bella via pinfall. Grade: C-

Their match at Hell in a Cell was much better, but it was telling a different story. After the match, Nikki abuses Brie for disobeying her orders. This let’s AJ slip in and attack Nikki with a running knee. Brie sees that and takes it as an opportunity to do Daniel Bryan’s YES! chant, which is only really interesting here because Daniel Bryan started doing that…when AJ Lee was his valet. Perhaps remembering that, AJ kicks Brie in the gut and DDTs her. She doesn’t care about either Bella, just her title. Very convoluted storytelling.

Big E. Langston appears in these A New Day Is Coming vignettes, doing a decent Jessie Jackson impersonation. But that’s kind of problematic because a crew of white writers are writing black pastor talk for their black wrestlers, with no defined purpose. Just debut the stable, already. Pull the trigger on everything. Stop being slow. Backstage, John Cena decides to ask Ryback to join his team again. He calls Ryback “big man,” so Ryback informs him that his proper nickname is “THE BIG GUY.” Ryback remembers that Cena said he had no dick. Cena says that he saw the footage, as if it was shot in secret and not on last year’s episodes of Raw, but thinks he deserves some credit for at least insulting Ryback to his face. Cena wants Ryback to control his own destiny. Ryback wants Cena to leave his locker room. Cena points out that it’s strange that the dude who wants to eat more is going to shy away from the big kid table. Good stuff.

Damien Mizdos Los Matadores

The Usos & Los Matadores vs. Goldust, Stardust, The Miz, and Damien Mizdow: The WWE has a Breaking News SMS System, and they used it to announce a Fatal Four Way match for the WWE Tag Team Championship. So, as a preview, the four teams involved will be in an eight-man tag, Usos and Matadores against the Dust Brothers, Miz and Mizdow. Even without much of a direction (and minus The Shield and The Wyatts), the WWE’s tag team division is better now than it’s been in some tome. Miz and Mizdow are a great addition to it. Complimenting things The Miz is doing still feels very strange. Mizdow continues aping The Miz on the apron, missing phantom clotheslines and bumping to the floor when The Miz is sent crashing to the canvas. The crowd wants to see Mizdow tagged in, but Miz tags Goldust in. Los Matadores clear the ring of Goldust and Stardust and The Miz, which causes Mizdow to come into the ring, bump for nothing, and slide out of the ring. It’s such a good act that the announcers are laughing legitimately, and not at themselves. Miz goes for his terrible figure four but one of the Matadores (someday I’ll learn to tell them apart, but this is what happens when you put two sibling Puerto Ricians under masks and give them a Mexican stereotype gimmick) rolls him up for a two count, sparing us. Goldust gets in and takes over. It can’t be said enough how great Goldust is in 2014, almost a full 20 years after debuting the character. He works smarter and harder than at almost any point in his career. Mizdow finally gets the tag and hits the ring, getting one of the best reactions of the night, but Miz tags himself back in, getting booed for doing it. Mizdow again remains cool about all of this. Miz’s terrible figure four is thwarted again, but Miz tags in Stardust. The Usos finally get into the ring and go through their routine, which feels too much like a routine because “FLYING USOS” and “USO CRAZY” are rote calls for the announcers. A finisherfest follows, Stardust hits his, and that’s all she wrote. Winners: Goldust, Stardust, The Miz, and Damien Mizdow via pinfall. Grade: B-

They go backstage to Grumpy Cat. Michael Cole continues calling Grumpy Cat a “he” despite his being corrected a billion times. They say she is watching the show, but she’s sleeping the dreamless sleep of any non-fan forced to watch Raw. The circumstances of poor Team Cena are spelled out. Everybody except John Cena is injured due to the evil machinations of The Authority. Next week, Larry the Cable Guy will be the guest host of Raw. Kill me now.

WWE Raw Team Cena Team Authority

In the main event slot tonight, that time-tested wrestling cliche: The contract signing. For the third or fourth time tonight, we see Team Cena taken out one by one while The Authority make their way to the ring. Ziggler: Curbstomped. Sheamus: World’s Strongest Slammed. Big Show: Accoladed. Triple H gloats about his fortune, saying that The Authority will stand tall because he loves the WWE more than life itself. A touching story. Triple H and Stephanie McMahon give Team Cena a chance to back down and refuse to Rise Above Hate. Team Cena (for some reason not called The Cenation) comes out. It’s just John Cena. Despite the odds, Cena marches down to the ring, looking ready to take on the world. Cena says that his team will win regardless of the setbacks and that The Authority is done. Regardless of what Stephanie McMahon thinks, it’s over, Jack. Because they forgot to take out John Cena. It’s a really good promo, Cena coming with the kind of fire that’s often absent from even his big match promos. He goes around the ring picking fans to join his team. There’s a dude dressed as a nun, a guy decked out as Captain Cactus Jack, and two tiny children. Even with that team, he says, he’s got a shot. His team’s got passion. The Authority is full of suck-ups and sell-outs. Cena starts calling his shots: Kane will go down first because he looks like an old dad stuck in a go-nowhere middle management job. Then Luke Harper, then Rusev and Mark Henry, and, finally, Seth Rollins. And poor Triple H is going to have to sit there and watch it. Stephanie McMahon has enough of that and slaps the taste out of Cena’s mouth. He wants to take the whole team on by himself, but Dolph Ziggler’s music hits because he’s impervious to weeks of beatdowns. Big Show comes down, woken up from his nap, and now it’s three-on-five. That’s 80% of the team, according to Lawler, because fractions are hard. Luke Harper’s music hits, which confuses the new Intercontinental Champion…and Erick Rowan comes down to the ring! His shirt no longer has a Nazi eagle on it, presumably because his conversation with the stuffed Grumpy Cat has caused him to see the error of his ways. It’s a legitimate surprise, one that doesn’t make much sense, but I’m cool with it. Steph gives everybody a chance to reconsider…and CESARO’S MUSIC HITS FOR REASONS I DON’T COMPREHEND BUT THAT I CAN TOTALLY GET BEHIND. OH WAIT, HE SWERVES CENA AND JOINS UP WITH THE AUTHORITY. YES. YEAH CESARO. YOU GO, YOU GLORIOUS ASSHOLE. And then Ryback’s music hits and The Authority gets sad. THE BIG GUY hits the ring and it’s pandemonium to close the show. Triple H stops Cena from hitting the Attitude Adjustment, but he ends up in the ring with Ryback, alone. That allows Cena to recover and put Triple H through a table. Team Cena stands tall while JBL references Don Quixote and everything looks interesting and new and full of potential. It’s a miracle, too, as the show went on in silence for the bulk of its three hours and the main event of a pay-per-view being used to sell the WWE Network to a largely skeptical audience may have been decided by pulling names out of a hat, but I have no idea who is winning any of the matches this Sunday, and that’s the way things are supposed to be.

Rating:

ghost starghost starghost star

 

Filed Under: Reviews, Wrestling Tagged With: Adam Rose, AJ Lee, Big E. Langston, Bray Wyatt, Brie Bella, Cesaro, Cody Rhodes, Damien Sandow, Daniel Bryan, Dean Ambrose, Dustin "Goldust" Rhodes, Erick Rowan, Heath Slater, John Cena, Kane, Kofi Kingston, Los Matadores, Luke Harper, Mark Henry, Natalya, Nikki Bella, Rusev, Ryback, Seth Rollins, Sheamus, Stephanie McMahon, The Big Show, The Miz, The Usos, Triple H, Tyson Kidd, Vince McMahon, WWE, WWE Monday Night Raw

Wrestling Review: WWE Raw (10/22/14)

August 12, 2014 by Colette Arrand Leave a Comment

 

Hulk Hogan Brock Lesnar

Last night, I watched wrestling. This is admittedly nothing new. Since the advent of the WWE Network, I watch wrestling every day, sometimes for hours. I’m writing a book of poetry about wrestling, I run a few Tumblrs about wrestling—it all comes with the territory. But last night I watched Raw, which I haven’t gotten a chance to do much this summer because the work that I’ve done this summer and the reason I do it often leaves me scrambling to bask in the warm glow of nostalgia. Though I can’t imagine a scenario where my friends and I don’t gather in my new house to watch the WWE Network’s less-than-stellar stream of Summerslam this Sunday, anything going on right now serves as a less-than-welcome reminder that soon enough I’ll be sitting down in front of a computer to listen to the rich talk about the problems inherent with having only a million dollars put away in an IRA. But it’s Hulk Hogan’s birthday, and even though The Hulkster now exists largely to talk about the virtues of the WWE Network (which, at 700,000 subscribers paying $9.99 a month to watch video footage Vince McMahon acquired for pennies on the dollar, is somehow considered a failure because the world of business has rules as made up, impenetrable, stupid, and fake as professional wrestling), I love the big orange bastard and always will. True fact: I went to WrestleMania XXX this year mostly because I wanted to see a 60 year old man rip his shirt off and flex his ancient muscles. When he messed up and called the Superdome the Silverdome (where he body slammed Andre the Giant some 27 WretleManias earlier), I was the only person in the arena not booing, because that was my WrestleMania, brother. The one in Detroit. The one that set the records. The Greatest Night In the History of Our Sport.

I had to get through three hours of Raw for Hulk Hogan’s birthday celebration, which, frankly, is insane. Exactly zero things on television this side of a holiday marathon of The Twilight Zone should last three hours, but that’s exactly what Raw does: It lasts. It staggers. It lurches. It finishes, out of breath and somehow overtime, maneuvering its various pieces around in an effort to hide the fact that nothing is happening. The recurring theme of an episode of Raw these days is the price point of the WWE Network, where, oddly, you can’t watch Raw, because even though Vince McMahon has cast his lot with the future, he still finds his business shackled to the mediums of the past. 700,000 is, to me, an impressive number of human beings who are willing to pay for access to a staggering number of frankly mediocre wrestling shows, but the last I checked, the average episode of Raw manages to pull in 3,000,000, and they sit through ads for things like Juicy Drop Pops and Sonic Chili Cheese Dogs. They’ll sit through the not-infrequent advertisements that air during an episode of Raw, too, where the comedic wrestlers on the show shill food or beverage in a way that makes me wish I couldn’t ingest things. But I can, and I do. Often during wrestling. Tonight, it was curry. Sunday, when my $9.99 will allow me to watch Summerslam? Who knows? Summerslam was the focus of tonight’s episode of Raw, as all of the men and women who will have matches on the show did their bit to advance their storyline to the point where that match would take on some semblance of meaning. Some of the matches on Summerslam, you can tell, are just there to eat the clock. While I know a lot of people are looking forward to Dean Ambrose vs. Seth Rollins, and while I suppose it makes a certain amount of sense that a feud based on one man’s quest to hunt down another who keeps running away would come to a head in a lumberjack match—that’s a match where the ring is surrounded by the wrestlers who will not be wrestling that evening—Ambrose and Rollins work much better when they have the arena as their playground. Similarly, an old-school Russia vs. USA Flag Match—the winner is the man who retrieves his flag from a pole that rises high above the ring—seems like a fun idea, but the WWE writer’s room stopped having interesting-if-poorly-informed things to say about the current political situation in Russia a few months ago, and Tea Party Patriot cum hirsute manager Zeb Coulter (picture Yosemite Sam on a fly fishing trip) constantly making reference to Rocky and Bullwinkle isn’t going to make Rocky IV feel any fresher in 2014.

Paul Heyman Brock Lesnar

But WWE can do a remarkable job of promoting a big match, and that is the axis upon which Summerslam revolves, the WWE World Heavyweight Championship clash between 15-time champion John Cena and unleashed Kraken Brock Lesnar. I like John Cena. I really like John Cena. I think the first John Cena match I saw was against Rob Van Dam at a WWE-produced revival of Extreme Championship Wrestling, a 90s entity that is responsible for revolutionizing wrestling in a number of ways large and small, one of which was to turn every professional wrestling fan over the age of 25 into an overly-entitled rage monster. I wasn’t watching wrestling much in 2006, but I remembered and liked ECW, so I went to a Buffalo Wild Wings in Taylor, Michigan to watch the somewhat local ECW legend Van Dam (from Battle Creek, MI) finally ascend to the WWE Championship (something I’d “borrowed” my mom’s credit card a few times to see in 2001, though Van Dam never clinched the title). ECW One Night Stand took place in the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City, which was a major hotbed for the organization when it was a real thing and not a marketing tool, and which remains a magnet for large independent wrestling events to this day. When John Cena’s music hit, 2,460 adult human beings really got on John Cena’s case for daring to be a professional wrester. He wore jean shorts, sneakers, and useless sweatbands, sure, but watching Cena go to work in that environment, 2,460 human adults chanting things like “Cena swallows” (a “hardcore” addendum to the time-tested chant of “Cena sucks”), I was won over by him immediately. By the time the people in the Buffalo Wild Wings, several thousand miles from New York City, started joining in on the chants emanating from the Hammerstein Ballroom, I knew I had a new favorite wrestler.

John Cena ECW One Night Stand

And so it’s been for me since then, which is a decision that’s treated me well. I’m into wrestling for the wrestling matches these days, and more often than not, on big shows, against big opponents, John Cena has one hell of a match. My favorite John Cena match in the past few years was the one that he had against Brock Lesnar at Extreme Rules in 2012, a stupidly named and often poorly booked show of “hardcore” matches that exists as a way to get a few thousand extra orders on a show that isn’t WrestleMania or Summerslam and that should go away post-haste, since the WWE Network exists, and, for $9.99, I’d watch WWE Singles Match if that’s what they wanted to call the damn thing. Cena vs. Lesnar had happened before, when John Cena was new and Brock Lesnar was thinking about quitting wrestling to try out for the National Football League, but I wasn’t watching and neither man was the symbol they’d become by the time 2012 brought Lesnar back to the world of fake fighting. Cena was the face of the WWE. Lesnar had gone legit, capturing the UFC Heavyweight Championship and maneuvering that sport towards an atmosphere that looked and sounded a lot like WWE, just without the benefit of goosed narratives. Diverticulitis took Lesnar out of the UFC, and a gigantic contract brought him back to a limited schedule of dates for the WWE. Now he functions much like Godzilla: When a major event comes around, he surfaces, wrecks a bunch of stuff, and leaves. He is the closest thing we have on this planet to a legitimate movie monster, and he is a glorious thing to behold. I love John Cena, but I want to see Brock Lesnar break him in half. I want him to make it look easy, like he’s hanging out on his ranch, shooting rifles with his brother, and eating a pile of terrible submarine sandwiches. Because John Cena is at his absolute best against guys like Lesnar, who are so good at the work they’ve been put here to do that they hate that work and the people who’d pay to witness it. Cena is great when he has to work for something, and ridding the WWE of the guy who crushed The Undertaker at WrestleMania, whose 21-0 streak going into WrestleMania XXX was the only thing in wrestling that could be said to mean more than any given title, is the only something left.

This episode of Raw presented something of a debate between Lesnar—represented by his advocate, Paul Heyman—and Cena; two extended interview segments that were both quite good. Heyman rapped, which, when you’re a 48-year-old man who was once prominently billed as “The Psycho Yuppie,” sounds more like Dr. Seuss than N.W.A., and Cena spoke largely about passion, how he has it, and how Lesnar’s lack of it means that he doesn’t deserve the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. Heyman hit his peak a few weeks ago when he brought Lesnar out as the man who would conquer John Cena’s 15th reign as champion and has been coasting a bit since—making fun of Cena’s origins as the horrible white rapper from the mean streets of West Newbury has been a thing since Cena was that character—but that’s kind of the point. He’s the dude standing behind King Kong. He doesn’t need to try very hard, because even a subpar effort from Paul Heyman on the microphone is museum quality compared to anybody else in the game.

This was made painfully obvious by the evening’s other large piece of non-physical storytelling, the ongoing saga of Brie Bella and Stephanie McMahon. An offshoot of last summer’s program that saw the rise of bearded populist hero Daniel Bryan in the face of a heartless corporate power structure that didn’t get why arenas across the country were making a big deal out of a guy they’d branded “goat face,” Bryan’s triumph at WrestleMania XXX (he beat Triple H, the head of the Authority, and then defeated Randy Orton and Batista to become the WWE World Heavyweight Champion) quickly turned sour, as his father died and he suffered a severe neck injury. This has caused him to relinquish the championship and largely disappear from television as he rehabs en route to an eventual return. Since, they’ve shunted the Bryan vs. Authority storyline to Brie Bella and Stephanie McMahon, the wives (in reality and in wrestling) of Bryan and Triple H.

Stephanie McMahon Brie Bella

Sometimes, when Stephanie McMahon is leading Brie through segments, everything is fine. Stephanie McMahon has grown considerably as a character over the past 15 years of her being in the spotlight, and is perhaps the second best Evil Boss character in the history of the medium, behind only her father. Brie Bella…is not good at talking. That’d be fine in a reality television show, where she actually thrives, but in a storyline that requires her to garner sympathy from an arena full of angry dudes, it’s going to take more than blackmailing the boss and calling her a bitch every week to get people invested. So this week, Stephanie brought out Daniel Bryan’s personal trainer, who awkwardly admitted to having an affair with the former champion, Brie’s husband, etc. This was, I guess, supposed to embarrass Brie Bella, but the segment was mostly terrible because, for starters, the woman playing the physical therapist was an atrocious actor even by wrestling standards. McMahon intimating Bryan’s cries “Yes! Yes! Yes!” in a tone suggesting the fake pornographic moans of an Herbal Essences commercial was funny, and I guess it makes sense that a heel would resort to slutshaming (the poor physical therapist is there in the corner watching McMahon imitate her during sex) in an effort to make the live fans cheer for Brie, but I checked out on this angle around the time McMahon was thrown into a gigantic kiddie pool of human waste, and whatever loyalty I have to Daniel Bryan doesn’t automatically transfer over to his spouse, because that isn’t how well-developed characters are created. Still, McMahon vs. Bella is the second most important match on the second most important show on the WWE calendar, and the crowd absolutely eats it up whenever the two get into a physical confrontation. There’s probably something to be said about the fact that these confrontations have been built around the signature moves of their husbands, but I’m not swimming through the kiddie pool of human waste to retrieve it. Therein you’ll probably also find a salient point about the biggest insult hurled by McMahon or Bella, beyond “bitch,” is the insinuation that Brie Bella is not good at sexually satisfying Daniel Bryan, which is, I guess, the job you sign up for when you get married.

Finally, Brock Lesnar crashed Hulk Hogan’s birthday party, because of course he did. “Party’s over, grandpa,” he said, leering like the villain of an 80s film. Brock Lesnar is there to beat up the collective childhoods of everybody in that arena—beyond Hogan, the ring had filled with Roddy Piper, Ric Flair, the nWo of Scott Hall and Kevin Nash, “Mean” Gene Okerlund, Jimmy Hart, and “Mr. Wonderful” Paul Orndorff. John Cena saved the day, because of course he did, but that doesn’t matter much. Nothing happened between he and Lesnar, because that can wait until Sunday, until Summerslam, until you’ve given up $9.99 for it and the rest of the card. Before those two had their final confrontation, and before all of the old-timers came out and Scott Hall had a bit of fun running through his old nWo catchphrases and Hogan ripped off his red and yellow Hulkamania shirt to reveal the black and white New World Order shirt beneath, Gene Okerlund directed Hogan’s attention to the video screen, where a legitimately touching tribute to Hogan played. It was set to Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young.” Hulk Hogan is 61 now, and while he can come out and run through the catchphrases and rip his shirt off and do the same bodybuilding poses I saw as a four-year old, he’s never going to wrestle again. Time has officially caught up to Hulk Hogan, and seeing clips of him dropping leg after leg to Dylan was strange at first, somehow dissonant to what Hogan was, until it hit me that, well, it kind of fit. The Ultimate Warrior died this year. Randy Savage died in 2011.”When you turn 61-years-young,” Hogan said, bringing down the energy after mustering a bit of that vintage Hogan hype, “you start to reflect back on a few things.”

Hulk Hogan nWo

Nothing Hogan could say on a night that ended with him cutting into a birthday cake festooned with candles spelling out “9.99” was going to reach the zenith of what turned out to be the final public appearance of The Ultimate Warrior, but last night, The Immortal Hulk Hogan pondered his mortality. And while the footage of his staring down Brock Lesnar will likely be replayed over and over for the next year, if not longer, the fact that there was no physical altercation between the two—not even Lesnar shoving Hogan to the mat, which would have blown the roof off of the building—speaks volumes about what Hulk Hogan is capable of in 2014. Hulkamania may be willing, brother, but all the training, prayers, and vitamins in the world can’t stop time. Beyond a paycheck, this is why someone like Hulk Hogan might be interested in forking over $9.99 for the WWE Network. Not for Summerslam, which will be there regardless, but because he’ll be dropping legs and shredding t-shirts on it forever, immortal, as promised. For a wrestler—for the wrestler—that’s not a bad legacy.

Results:

  • Paul Heyman addressed Brock Lesnar’s upcoming match against John Cena by “rapping.” Since he did so without a beat, one could even say he freestyled.
  • Roman Reigns def. RybAxel (Ryback and Curtis Axel) via disqualification.
  • Bray Wyatt and Chris Jericho had a face-to-face confrontation that was lifted entirely from The Silence of the Lambs.
  • Seth Rollins def. Rob Van Dam via pinfall. After the match, Dean Ambrose emerged from a giant gift box to attack Rollins, who ran away through the crowd.
  • Stephanie McMahon interviewed Daniel Bryan’s physical therapist, who admitted to having an affair with Bryan. This led Bryan’s wife, Brie Bella, to slap the therapist and attack McMahon, putting her in Bryan’s signature finishing maneuver, the Yes! Lock.
  • Jack Swagger def. Cesaro via submission. He then stared down Rusev, their inactivity a metaphor for the Cold War.
  • Eva Marie def. WWE Diva’s Champion AJ Lee by pinfall due to a distraction by Paige, who then read a terrible poem to mock her “frienemy,” which is an awful word to hear a trio of middle-aged men repeat seven or eight times in six minutes.
  • John Cena called out Brock Lesnar, who did not respond.
  • Brie Bella vs. Stephanie McMahon did not occur, as Brie Bella was arrested for assaulting Daniel Bryan’s physical therapist.
  • Heath Slater def. Dolph Ziggler via count-out, as The Miz was distracting Ziggler from the announce table.
  • Randy Orton def. WWE United States Champion Sheamus by pinball.
  • Hulk Hogan’s birthday party was interrupted by Brock Lesnar. The assembled old folks there to celebrate Hogan’s 61 years of Hulkamania running wild were saved from a beating by John Cena. Rather than fight, Lesnar ditched the ring, saving the inevitable clash for this Sunday’s Summerslam.

Rating: far out

For no reason other than that they played him down to the ring to it last night, be sure to listen to Paul Orndorff’s brilliant theme song:

Filed Under: Reviews, Wrestling Tagged With: AJ Lee, Bray Wyatt, Brie Bella, Brock Lesnar, Cesaro, Chris Jericho, Curtis Axel, Daniel Bryan, Dolph Ziggler, Eva Marie, Heath Slater, Hulk Hogan, Jack Swagger, John Cena, Paige, Paul Heyman, Paul Orndorff, Randy Orton, Raw, Rob Van Dam, Roman Reigns, Rusev, Ryback, Seth Rollins, Sheamus, Stephanie McMahon, The Miz, Triple H, Wrestling Reviews, WWE

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