Last week’s Raw was kind of great. It felt fresh and new to have Dean Ambrose as the centerpiece for the show and it was exciting enough to where the crap filler that starts piling up late in the second hour and early in the third hour can almost be forgivable because they are doing some things right. Tonight, though? Man, I don’t even know.
I’m still excited that Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins are centerpieces of the WWE’s storylines right now, but literally everything else on the show was dragging those segments down to a really obnoxious degree. How are we months into this Bella feud and they haven’t had a single match yet? The Bunny was funny a few times but now it’s just grating now that they are focusing so much on it.
Don’t get me wrong, there were good things about this Raw, it’s just that there was so much bad that it’s hard to focus on any of the good. For a third year now the WWE will be rolling out pink merchandise for Komen for the Cure, which seems weird because the past year has not been great PR for Komen for the Cure. Something about Hulk Hogan coming out wearing a pink Hulkamania shirt and cutting a promo about finding a cure, brother, seems disingenuous, but maybe that’s because he was literally competing for television time flexing while breast cancer survivors were in the front row balling their eyes out while nobody would bring the lights up on them.
Okay, let’s try to be positive.
Intercontinental Triple Threat Was Super Fun
Put Cesaro, Ziggler and the Miz into the ring together, have them all turn up the pace to 9 and let them go and what do you get? A very, very fun match. They were allowed to get creative with their spots and it showed, everything from Ziggler doing the Masato Tanaka neckbreaker/DDT spot on Cesaro and Miz to them stealing rollups off of each other.
Jamie Noble and Joey Mercury: Stooges 2.0
In the 90’s something incredible happened when Vince McMahon, the evil Mr. McMahon, needed henchmen to do his dirty work, like every super villain should. Who did he turn to? The bumbling pair of wrestling legends that were Pat Patterson and Gerald Brisco. This led to some of the best comedic moments in WWE’s history and they are remembered right along with the Mean Street Posse as ideas that should have been awful but turned out awesome.
It’s been no secret that Joey Mercury is more or less Triple H’s right hand man behind the scenes and Jamie Noble has been making appearances on Raw the past few weeks helping out security, to the extent where he’s been trending on Twitter. WWE has taken notice and welcome to the New Stooges. It’s pretty awesome to watch and Dean Ambrose proved to be the perfect foil for them.
#AmbroseLive
Dean Ambrose being featured as heavily as he was can only be a good thing. Apparently while Triple H’s stooges were looking for him he was raiding the concession stands and found his way to the merch tables where he loaded up a bag full of distinctly non-pink merchandise, then brought it out into the ring to distribute, along with Seth’s briefcase, to the fans.
He ended up leaving the briefcase in the ring and bailing to let Seth reclaim it, only for Rollins to end up opening it and getting a face full of slime. Yes, like what would happen on Nickelodeon shows in the 90’s. I’m not kidding, this is something that happened in 2014. Then, backstage, there was a running gag about there being a vibrator in Rollins’s bag, which he claimed was an electric shaver.
Ambrose had some tremendous one-liners throughout this, though, including one about them sending out the “Cruiserweight division” when Mercury and Noble came out, then when security came out asking them if they were Rosebuds last week. Ambrose is the nutbag this company needs, maybe not the one that it deserves.
Rollins Lays Out Ambrose and Cena
After enduring a marathon of Raw we were treated to a tag team match between Cena/Ambrose and Kane/Orton where Kane and Orton have expressed their disinterest in cleaning up messes for Rollins over and over again while Stephanie told them that it was their job. Cena worked most of the match while Ambrose waited for the hot tag and just when Ambrose had Kane with the Dirty Deeds Rollins ran in.
Chaos ensued and it eventually led to some Ambrose/Cena friction, then Ambrose getting curb stomped onto the briefcase and Cena following suit. The fans chanted “Thank you Rollins” afterwards, which was pretty funny. Regardless, it kind of looks like a three-way at Hell in the Cell between Rollins, Cena and Ambrose, although nothing is official just yet. Shouldn’t they be trying to, you know, set up some matches for this PPV and announce them?
Also, no videos yet because WWE is either not posting clips to YouTube or they are delaying them a crazy amount. I’ll add them later if they post them.
