Last Night's "RAW After Mania" Featured Debuts, Surprises, Returns, And A New GM
Last night’s RAW, the first one after WrestleMania 33, was a wild one. It always is, because the WWE prepares for the crowd to be full of every die hard fan that traveled a ridiculously long distance to be there, and they put on a show. Let’s recap everything worth talking about.
A tribute to the career of The Undertaker opened the show, and the crowd chanted his name in unison for almost a full minute straight. It was a really cool moment…until the crowd decided it was time to get themselves over. They transitioned into a “Roman Sucks” chant, and ruined the moment. His music hit, and well, he’s got heat, brother.
Roman Reigns just standing there absorbing everything, and letting the “smarks” embarrass themselves was fantastic television. The RAW after WrestleMania crowds are officially parodies of themselves at this point, and Roman played them like a fucking fiddle.
“This is my yard now.”
Has to be the best promo of his career, and I’m not kidding or being sarcastic. That’s exactly what Roman should be. Don’t book him as an heroic underdog babyface, book him as an arrogant killer tweener. The kids and women will still love him and drive his merch numbers through the roof, and you’ll start to change the opinions of hardcores who are too blind to see his in-ring talent. If you don’t, he’s a tweener, so it’s fine.
The Club immediately cashed in their rematch clause for the RAW Tag Team Championships against The Hardy Boyz, so they had a match. It was perfectly fine, but enhanced by the crowd being so into The Hardy Boyz…more specifically the BROKEN Hardy Boyz.
So far it’s unclear whether or not Matt and Jeff are BROKEN. If you don’t know what the fuck that means, check out this blog I wrote in February about their WWE return. On the surface, it seems as if they’re back to just being Team Xtreme, but they still use the words “DELETE”, “OBSOLETE”, and “WONDERFUL” an awful lot. I’m guessing they want to work the gimmick, but WWE wants to give them a nostalgia run first, which I’m okay with. This match also featured a “Fuck that owl!” chant that was so good it almost redeemed the crowd. The “Owl” in reference is the company logo of Anthem, IMPACT Wrestling’s new owners. Anthem tried to claim ownership of the BROKEN gimmick and threatened legal action on Matt, Jeff, and Ring Of Honor last month.
Mustafa Ali interrupting Neville’s promo was one of the most exciting moments of the night for me. Knowing the trope of title changes the night after WrestleMania, I thought we’d be seeing Ali, who I’ve been a huge fan of for many years, get his big break. It turned out not to be a title match, but I still knew this could be a star making performance in front of the very crowd who goes on the internet and begs for WWE to take the division seriously.
Oh! Okay then!
That same hilarious, zany, “Bizzaro Land” crowd I just talked about then bowed at the feet of Vince McMahon when his music hit. You know, the guy who actually books Roman Reigns? The guy who got all the vulgar chants and insults thrown his way before?
Crying emojis, yo.
Anyway, Kurt Angle was named as the new General Manager of RAW, and while it was expected and rumored for months, the place still went wild. I mean, who doesn’t want to see Kurt Angle in backstage comedy segments again?!
Vince also announced that next week we’re getting a “Superstar Shakeup”, AKA people are getting traded from RAW and SmackDown. I don’t love that we’re not even waiting a year to go through with this, but it could fix a lot of issues right now (ex. lack of depth in RAW Women’s roster, SD’s tag division, etc)
The New Day issued an open challenge to ANY tag team…and uhhh….SAY YEAH!
We go hard, all day all night.
2x NXT Tag Team Champions The Revival debuted to a thunderous ovation, and had an amazingly fun match with The New Day. They went over pretty strongly which was cool of The New Day to do, and smart of Vince to book. The Shatter Machine delivered made a statement, and put everyone on notice. If you haven’t seen these guys before, you should know they’re the best tag team on the main roster currently going. Seek out their 2 out of 3 Falls match with DIY from NXT TakeOver Toronto. It’s honestly the best tag team match I have ever seen and my 2016 Match of the Year.
Emmalina no more, Evil Emma has returned! Nia Jax and Charlotte kicked off a feud as well, so expect a Sasha Banks heel turn in the coming weeks. Bayley needs a contender and I doubt it’ll be Dana Brooke.
There was a great promo from Paul Heyman, but unfortunately he cut the exact same one the night before at WrestleMania in the video package for Brock Lesnar vs Goldberg, so it was a little weird. The one thing that changed was the call out of Roman Reigns, who is now the only OTHER person to defeat The Undertaker at WrestleMania, and the crowd didn’t like that one bit. This is undoubtably the main event of next year’s WrestleMania in New Orleans, and I’m personally very excited for that. For as much shit as their first match got, it wound up being one of the best main events in Mania history. Now that Roman has proved himself as deserving of the Brock rub and much less green than he was, I think this match makes a lot of sense from a storytelling, political, and business standpoint. Sue me.
RAW’s main event was booked as Seth Rollins and Chris Jericho vs Kevin Owens and Samoa Joe, but as you could see from the video above, Y2J wasn’t gonna be in any condition to compete. So he’d need a suitable replacement…
This great RAW was capped off with the return of Finn Bálor, the Inaugural Universal Champion who never lost his title. Finn was injured by Rollins during their match at SummerSlam, and has been out of action ever since. When he first came out, I thought for a split second, “How cool would it be if he turned heel here?”, but quickly realized outside of the cool moment and pop, that’d be a horrible idea. Bálor is maybe the only main eventing babyface on RAW that is cheered across the board. You can’t throw that away like they did with AJ Styles. Bálor got the pin over Kevin Owens, and gave off the vibe that he was pissed Owens wrongfully won the championship he never lost. It was a really good close to RAW.
Tonight is the final night the WWE will spend in Orlando at the Amway Center with SmackDown Live, and I’d expect the same kind of show from the blue team. Possibly even the long awaited debut of Shinsuke Nakamura? Let’s hope.