Well wasn’t last week’s RAW a little strange? Nearly every Champion within the company was either beat down, lost their match or even lost their title! Unsurprisingly the crowd didn’t deliver the same entertainment as the week before and whatever else we watched on the show seemed to just be a repeat of the previous week’s SmackDown.
Antonio Cesaro lost his United States Championship against Kofi Kingston and it seemed to be written in the starts for quite some time. Cesaro has been mis-used since the New Year and maybe CM Punk walking round WrestleMania weekend with an Antonio shirt didn’t do him any favours. Who knows though, when mid-card talent used to lose their Championship like this then nine times out of ten they would usually be getting the push to the main event so I guess we can all keep our fingers crossed on that one.
Wade Barrett looked like he may finally get booked appropriately after regaining the Intercontinental Championship last week, only for him to job to R Truth who couldn’t quite believe it himself. R Truth’s expression after the win looked like he’d just walked in on Lil’ Jimmy having some fun time with Mrs. Truth!
Dolph Ziggler seemed to lose all his momentum again with a clean loss to Jack Swagger which feels all too familiar for Dolph. And Kaitlyn lost to the Bella Twins (after the ‘bigger one’ did twin magic for the win as King so eloquently put.)
Overall the only segments that felt fresh were the Brock Lesnar and CM Punk moments (Surprise surprise!)
Brock Lesnar started the show off brightly by viciously attacking 3MB and Paul Heyman challenging Triple H to an ‘Old School’ Steel Cage match. Whether or not this means we are about to get the old Blue Cage I’m not sure but whatever happens we need to see a Lesnar victory at this event to at least get his character back on track as the monster heel.
CM Punk came out and basically walked out mid promo. Punk gave the microphone to Heyman and said “I can’t do this.” This will now give Punk some time to recuperate and my only wonder is how they bring Punk back in to the fold. We all know that when someone returns from a hiatus they will always receive the babyface pop. Punk is more than capable of turning that round quite easily but maybe WWE are planning on giving Punk another shot at being a top babyface?
On the plus side Team Hell No beat The Primetime Players yet again and cemented themselves as the only champions to walk out of the show chins held high. (Well, kind of.)
WWE quickly tried to play up the Fandango response the week before and pushed it so far down your throat that you couldn’t help feel that everything had a ‘corporate’ feel to it. Fandango acted like a both the face and heel and in any case he did nothing to help himself. He was far better on Smackdown where he went full heel again by dropping Lillian Garcia mid-dance and debuting a new finisher which will mean he doesn’t need a hip replacement in 25 years!
Ryback gave us a promo fully explaining his actions against John Cena last week and to be fair I think it went on longer than his actual WrestleMania match. That being said it all kind of made sense and Ryback looked a lot more comfortable delivering his words than he has done in the past. It’s a shame that Ryback is looking at another loss on PPV in a few weeks against Cena which will leave him even further down the totem pole.
The show closed with Cena being attacked by The Shield and Ryback looking on in admiration. The ‘shocking’ interruption by The Shield was spoiled by a small accident by WWE’s Production crew as they mistakenly cut to Seth Rollins at the top of the 100 section ready to make his appearance before quickly being given another camera angle.
Overall the show failed to deliver the heights that were achieved the week previous. This was down to many factors and one being the crowd. These were your regular casual WWE fans in majority who weren’t interested in anything other than what was happening in the ring. As for the fans watching at home, I could have quite easily thrown a brick threw my TV after I watched The Marine 3 trailer 13 times! (Yes I actually counted them all!) Throughout the UK broadcast this film was slapped across my eyeballs just as desperately as Fandango was. Guess what WWE, I still don’t know when the film is coming out, whether it’s already out, whether it’s any good and no, I won’t be purchasing or watching it anytime soon.
This week’s RAW promises to pick up the pace again as WWE head to London in the UK and we can guarantee that if the show doesn’t entertain us then the crowd will at least try to give us something to talk about. Either that or we’ll get 13 trailers to ‘Dead Man Down’ and Ryback will give us a lecture on nutrition and how to breathe through our nostrils.
You can reach Martyn on Twitter @BeansOnToastUK or get in touch via email at [email protected].
