Tuesday, January 29, 2019

Monday night RAW | Review

Let's talk about Monday night RAW,  which was broadcast LIVE from Phoenix Arizona.

Seth Rollins opened the show talking about winning the Royal Rumble the night before, the usual stuff we, the viewers, hear after every Rumble, including pointing at the Wrestlemania sign, something that's probably going to be done on every Raw, Smackdown (pay-per-views included) til April.

Triple H comes out, gets a nice reception from the crowd, see what happens when you don't appear on TV every week? You get cheered. He bigs up Rollins and then Ambrose intervenes, the past is talked about, Ambrose goads Triple H to make the match between him and Rollins or does he have to ask Vince's permission. 

The match is made. Seth won the back and forth match with a stomp to Ambrose, back from the commercial, Ambrose is still in the ring. All of a sudden interrupted by Nia Jax and Tamina. I like that they are having Nia interact with the guys in the ring after all, she's not like most girls as it says in her theme song. Her getting Dean out of the ring is interesting, could they be building to some sort of match between these two? I kinda wanna see that to be honest. 

Nia and Tamina went on to defeat Alexa and Mickie via a impressive double Samoan Drop from Nia to advance to the next round. Next we see a battle of two former General Managers. Kurt Angle was beaten clean by Corbin. The Olympian looks so out of it now, he needs to retire. I think they are building to that story. Perhaps ending at Wrestlemania. 

Other things that happened were, Finn Balor beaten up by Lashley and his "hype-man"  Lio Rush. The Revival defeated Hawkins and Ryder via the Shatter Machine. If your wondering why we are seeing a lot of the lesser talent on tv. The words AEW might have something to do with it, that is all I'm going say about that.

Elias is now back to being a heel, taking out Jeff Jarrett and Road Dogg with the Guitar. Natalya and Dana Brooke were defeated by Liv Morgan and Sarah Logan, I missed this match to be honest, I'm not surprised that the heels won this one. 

Ronda Rousey's open challenge was accepted by Bailey, interesting to see the crowd so against Ronda, probably because of her 'mania opponent. Ronda won that via the arm-bar. "The Man" interrupted and chose the champion for the main event in April. 

Braun Strowman v Drew McIntyre ended in a DQ. This part of the show, ended with Corbin and McIntyre laying out Strowman. So much for the new era, it's more like new year, same story. 

The main event promo was all about Rollins making a decision about who he was to face at Wrestlemania, Brock or Daniel Bryan. We never got to that as Brock gave Rollins F5 after F5 after F5 and more to end the show. 

Wrestlemania is a long time away, so there is no rush for Rollins to make a decision as to who he is going to face for the respective titles. Did I enjoy the show? Some parts yes, some no. I struggled to keep paying attention in the second half of the show, I deserve a WWE championship of my own for watching this 3 hour show show every week. Smackdown included. 

Click HERE for my thoughts on Smackdown.