I Think Enzo Amore Might Just Do It...He Might Just Make People Care About The Cruiserweights
Welcome BACK to the weekly RAW recap! I’m going back to my original style of doing these, recapping the show top-to-bottom, by popular demand. Tried a few different methods, but I think it was clear that this is the most efficient way to get all of my thoughts and fill you guys in on what went down. Let’s get right into it.
Before the show began, news broke that Jeff Hardy tore his right rotator cuff and he’s gonna need surgery, and Mike and Maria Kanellis (from SmackDown) are expecting their first child. Annnnnd the Bullet Club kinda “invaded” RAW. They were all in the area for a Hot Topic signing, so they took the hundreds of fans that had gathered to meet them, and marched over to Citizens Business Bank Arena with their bullhorns blasting.
Cody gave the full speech from Independence Day and before Being The Elite came out, nobody knew why the fuck he did it, and the absurdity of it made me laugh out loud. Here’s the full episode:
Now onto the actual show…
When they announced Reigns would be on MizTV, I thought, “Makes sense, they gotta set up a new feud for him. Someone will interrupt this and we’ll get on with it.” I spoke on From The Top Rope yesterday about how the plans going forward were to reunite The Shield at TLC (and Carrabis threw an all time hissyfit), and I figured they’d have to come together to face a huge force. I didn’t even put thought into who it’d, but three years after breaking them apart, you ONLY reunite them if it’s for some super mega match. Right? So maybe this MizTV segment will set that up? Wrong. They are setting up The Shield vs The Miztourage in a match nobody is asking for. This coming from a guy who was critical of putting The Shield back together in the first place, but warmed up to the idea after seeing how crowds were reacting, and also coming from a guy who LOVES The Miz and compared him to Rick Rude and “Rowdy” Roddy Piper less than 24 hours ago. Nobody needs to see Seth, Roman, or Dean bump for Bo Dallas and Curtis Axel. Our last memory of the three as a team is of them delivering a rare clean sweep over Evolution in an elimination match. This is a MASSIVE downgrade.
Kurt Angle decided to put his son Jason Jorgle in a tag team with Matt Hardy, and they beat The Miztourage, so I guess there’s not even plans to pretend like they’ll be a threat to anyone. Jeff’s injury puts Matt in a really weird spot if he really can’t use the BROKEN gimmick still, and I can’t see him succeeding in a singles run without it.
This was a rematch from No Mercy’s kickoff show, and I gotta say, Elias is pretty fuckin’ good. For sure better than I’ve given him credit for. Crews is great too, but he’s still not really connecting with anyone. Titus or no Titus, he’s never shown me that he has a personality.
BRRRRRAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNNNNN beat the ever living fuck out of Curt Hawkins and cut an awesome pissed off promo, challenging anyone on the roster to a fight. Dean Ambrose accepted, and they got on with the match.
Strowman pretty quickly disposed of Dean Ambrose, and I enjoyed it more than most. I saw some complaints about this hurting Ambrose in a spot it didn’t need to, but I thought the story they told protected him very nicely and he didn’t come out looking bad at all. He was taped up from a brutal match the night before, and Braun directly targeted his injured arm the whole match. Ambrose had a few flashes of luck and showed that he’s a fighter, but ultimately Braun Strowman is on another level than the rest of the roster in a kayfabe standpoint. Dean being back in a tag team also muffles the blow of the loss. He’s not a singles competitor right now, so he’s stronger when with his partner. All good from me.
Alexa in leather pants. Oh my. Okay.
Bliss cut a fantastic promo deviating back to her heel ways after trying to get in the good graces of everyone in the build to her Fatal 5 Way title defense, where she was annoyed that everyone was talking about things other than her retaining last night. She started making a case for how she’s run through the whole division, but Mickie James cut her off before she got too far. On RAW Talk Sunday night, Alexa brushed Mickie off as an “old lady” she wasn’t too concerned about. She didn’t take that too kindly, made her say it to her face, and attacked her. Everything about this was so well done, and I’m already bought in for their inevitable match.
Nothing about this match was bad, per-say, but I think both of these guys clearly work better in tags (Sheamus more than Rollins) and I never got into it. I have a horribly hard time getting into anything Sheamus does singles-wise, other than his Big Show/Daniel Bryan/Cesaro feuds.
Yep! We’re really doing this!
Goldust and Finn Bálor had this match after an attack backstage based on Finn “saving” Goldie from Bray Wyatt.
Goldust is still one of the best promos in the company, in my opinion, but if there’s no plans to do anything with him, why was he allowed so much offense on Finn Bálor? I’m fine with a 2017 heel Goldust push and I’d actually love to see it happen, but don’t cocktease us and use him to put guys over every week.
Finally, the main event segment everyone is talking about…the Cruiserweights. Yep, you heard read that right. The Cruiserweights main evented RAW and everyone is talking about them, thanks to Enzo Amore. I hated breaking him and Big Cass up, I hated how they buried Enzo six feet deep, I hated how they put him in this division and shifted focus from wrestling to shenanigans, and I hated that they put the strap on him at No Mercy…but god damn if it didn’t work. People cared about this, and everyone overdelivered. This was kinda Enzo’s heel turn, gloating about how amazing he is, how nobody cares about the rest of the guys, and how his jersey should be retired…then revealing a no contact clause in his contract like a true chickenshit. Neville, on the other hand, came off like a fucking supervillian, and was almost haunting when he said “I’m here to end you.”
Since he violated the contract, I’m taking that as his move back up to the main roster, and deservedly so. He did all there was to do as a Cruiserweight and truly tried his best. I think he may be a top five worker in the entire world right now, and I’d love to see him move onto bigger and better things, possibly even as a badass tweener, not a heel. He should not give a flying fuuuuuck and run through people twice his size.
Braun came back out to beat the shit out of Enzo after the show went off the air. I have no idea why they did this but it made me laugh.
That’s all for RAW, which was a really good show this week. Come back tomorrow at 10am for SmackDown talk!