The 06/06/16 edition of WWE Monday Night Raw reviewed in about 4 minutes – including AJ Styles shooting on John Cena burying other wrestlers, Seth Rollins has a fantastic interview segment, Chris Jericho confirms he’s from Winnipeg, you stupid idiot, Tyler Breeze shaves Fandango’s back, and much, much more…
Money in the Bank
This week’s Raw opened with the Money in the Bank match’s six competitors all sitting on top of their own ladders, like they were at a lifeguard convention.
Of the six guys there, four of them are really good promos: Owens, Zayn and Ambrose all played their roles perfectly, but Chris Jericho was an absolute gift – drink him in.
After claiming he’d already won a Money in the Bank match – which he hasn’t – Cesaro asked if he did so in Stupid-idiot-ville.
“No,” Jericho replied. “I’m from Winnipeg.”
Then out came Teddy Long, who started talking gibberish about wanting to run Smackdown, playas. The poor guy. He was only out there for two reasons – to be a physical reminder that Smackdown is going live on the 19th July, and so Stephanie McMahon had someone to emasculate.
Steph made singles matches between the Money in the Bank guys for the rest of the night, where Chris Jericho tapped out to Cesaro’s sharpshooter, Alberto del Rio beat Sami Zayn after he appeared to get knocked out by the ring post, and Dean Ambrose beat Kevin Owens with a Dirty Deeds.
SETH ROLLINS – YAY!; ROMAN REIGNS – BOO!
Rather than expose Roman Reigns’ lack of promo skills in front of a live audience, WWE wisely aired two video packages setting up Reigns vs Seth Rollins for the WWE Title. Thing is…it made Roman come off as wooden, and it put over Seth as a total babyface hero.
I don’t know what they expected. The interview showed home video of Seth as a kid dreaming of being a wrestler, and had footage of his surgery and recovery. There is no way you can watch this and not root for Rollins.
And then you had Roman – who not only was nowhere near as engaging when he spoke, but also, his story just isn’t relatable. It’s almost impossible to feel empathy for THE guy.
Here’s the other stuff that happened…
RUSEV BEAT JACK SWAGGER (VIA COUNTOUT)
Swagger got a big hometown pop from the otherwise dreadful Oklahoma crowd. Rusev got a countout victory and scuffled with Titus O’Neil afterwards.
THE VAUDEVILLIANS BEAT BIG CASS & ENZO AMORE (VIA DQ)
Aidan English tried to recreate the real-life Enzo concussion spot from Payback by throwing Amore into the ropes. This sent Big Cass outta his moind, getting disqualified for destroying English and Gotch.
I’m really invested in Cass and Enzo’s friendship…which probably means they’re getting broken up in the upcoming draft.
CHAR-WHAT?
Charlotte’s promos all seem to follow the same structure: start out face, but then turn heel near the end – with no-one buying into the face bit.
She backtracked on disowning Ric Flair as her father, for Becky Lynch and Natalya to then came out…pretty much just to get beat down by Dana Boobs.
R-TRUTH BEAT TYLER BREEZE (VIA DQ)
And despite months of building up Goldust and R-Truth as a tag team, Breezeango have suddenly become the better act. Their skit of Breeze shaving Fandango’s back to become areo-gigantic was – in a change for Raw – genuinely funny.
And now, the main event, with thoughts on AJ Styles’ controversial promo!
Watch the video above to find out Oli’s thoughts on AJ Styles shooting on John Cena burying talent in an on-air promo, and what he rated Raw overall!
