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Jan 13th RAW "Second Foot Forward?" - REVIEW

This is the episode that I was actually interested in. It's all well and good when the money guns are blazing but the difficult second album question must be answered.

It opened with a recap from last week's Monday Night RAW on Netflix so I can only assume that RAW is going to open with this recap every single week for the rest of time. Drink every time you hear the word 'Netflix'.

An SUV pulled up and it was such a mystery as to who was in the car that the crowd were already chanting CM Punk. As it turns out, it was CM Punk who was in the SUV and we are back to the much-loved one-shot entrance from the back.

Of course, CM Punk is the only person in the world to like hockey so it always has to be the first thing commentary mention.

I'll get straight down to business. I found this entire segment to be utterly interminable. It came off like that none of the people involved particularly had a strong plan of what exactly they were going to say. Punk was doing his generic and tired babyface promo that we are all sick of. He didn't say a lot. He pointed to a WrestleMania sign and said it was there. It wasn't there. The takeaway was that he is entering the Rumble. It felt like an eternity to get there but we got there.

Rollins interrupted and didn't really say anything either but his point was entering the rumble as well and then Drew McIntyre came out and didn't say anything AGAIN but he is entering the rumble. This entire segment was a load of rehashed waffle. RAW did not get off to a good start here. I was bored silly. Everyone was so whiny, you can't buy that any of them will win the rumble and I quite like all three men involved but I came away from the segment hating all of them and I'm only supposed to hate one of them.

What followed was for me, the real hook to watch the show this week.

He was packaged as the real deal and probably rightfully so. More of a real deal than I thought he would be treated as. He had pyro, his own unreadable title card and labelled as the second-best luchador on Earth which is never a death sentence for new Mexican wrestlers in WWE. He even had a live mic promo afterwards which you can't say for many but we'll get there.

They wrestled an Indie main event match and I'm fine with that every once in a while. It had quite an NXT feel with the black ring and a somewhat-blacked out crowd. Penta El Zero M also got rid of his stupidly long moniker. As an aside, I always preferred Pentagon Jr as a name. Penta El Zero M is an Xbox gamertag. It appears that they have went with simply 'Penta' which I am welcoming with open arms.

Its an unusual brand of debut for WWE because it had a sizable length and a stiff back-and-forth. It's normally an uneventful squash match with a jobber or a Royal Rumble surprise whereby they would eliminate one or two people and get booted out off camera. I very much welcome them allowing Penta to get all of his shit in and Gable demonstrated his fantastic selling once again. This type of match as a one-off every now and then makes the show worth watching.

Similar to how everyone was worried about AJ Styles coming to WWE, it turns out that if you treat someone like a big deal, they are received like a big deal. We do have to have the Michael Cole-penned "he/she/they call this the [finishing move]" but what are you gonna do? They love branding.

The promo was something else.

Handing him a live mic after all that shit he tweeted shows unbelievable gall but it paid off in the end. He had the crowd in the palm of his hand the entire time with an unbelievable anger he had been building up for quite some time. He was brave enough to speak Spanish for most of it and they were brave enough to let him. Everyone knew the catchphrase. This was an all-around success in my opinion.

This was when my frustrations with the show started.

So Sheamus comes out for his match with Ludwig Kaiser and as soon as he gets in the ring, he gets cut off by a backstage segment that has nothing to do with the match. It was some story to do with the Pure Fusion Collective that they squeezed in at a really stupid moment and it was so hastily put together that you couldn't really take in any of the information because you were settling in for the Sheamus match.

THEN it cuts back to Sheamus for all of ten seconds and it hard cuts to an advert for WWEShop.

AND THEN it cuts back to Pat McAfee and Michael Cole, doing a Tosh.0 or Alex Zane's RudeTube bit where do the equivalent of when you are out with some friends and they show you what is supposed to be a funny video of something that you have no interest in or no context for. I have no idea what this baffling horseshit was but I could not wait for it to disappear from my screen so I can watch Sheamus WRESTLE on my WRESTLING SHOW.

Instead, we got some American Football shite.

They show Daniel Cormier in the audience for literally no reason.

The match was quite good and there was no chance it wasn't going to be. It's just that the events leading up to the bell just put me in a fowl mood.

I am currently thoroughly enjoying Ludwig Kaiser's single run where he wrestles matches like a cheeky bastard. It's a great foil for Sheamus but the thought has entered by head that they are trying to replicate the Sheamus/Cesaro Best of 7 series.

To compound my annoyance that, as soon as it was getting going, the ad break was placed right as Kaiser was mid-air, mid-move and we perfectly missed his White Noise off the top. I'm sure they'll get the hang of managing their own television adverts (We don't get any in the UK, we just get an untimely awkward black screen). I'm very much looking forward to them charging a premium worldwide for ad-free WWE programming on Netflix.

It was the first match in a while that was, without context, a good match but compromised by sloppy production. McAfee and Cole have gotten off relatively lightly in my reviews thus far but the pair of them together absolutely chew the scenery of the product on a regular basis. The commentary on SmackDown of Wade Barrett and Joe Tessitore is relatively charming by comparison to the incessant pogchamping.

A great little moment.

Late 2000's TNA Impact is back everybody and by back, I mean "TO THE BACK!"

It was a decent backstage segment which I know is mildly contrary to my constant grievances about the Bloodline being involved and interlocked with absolutely everything. It presents an exciting direction for Sami Zayn that will lead us down the garden path to believe that Sami will win the big one.

I don't care for these crowd-side interview segments.

They never seem to really achieve anything meaningful and it comes across as lip-service to fill and/or kill time to get cheap heat or cheap pops in front of a crowd. I never get anything extra from them and this show has already wasted a lot of my time.

MORE BACKSTAGE SEGMENTS.

Zayn and Miz will have a match. The Wyatts have moved to SmackDown. Karrion Kross and The Miz are having half a feud. That's it.

I am generally always happy to see Gunther and it was going well until Jey Uso came out. It was an excellent and mesmerizing promo where he said many things that are all true and my feelings exactly. The focus should be about the prize of the title and it feels like half the roster are squabbling over immaterial, intangible concepts and he holds the grand prize.

Jey Uso came out and his entrance, I swear to God, was longer than both Gunther's entrance and his promo up until Uso's music hit. Jey Uso promises that the Bloodline story is behind him like that will literally ever happen and once again, Gunther was fantastic. My problem was that this was setting up a match on Saturday Night's Main Event - a show that anyone outside of America cannot legally watch. So for all their chat about the world watching on the globally available Netflix, this promo was a big shill for a more advertiser-hungry show.

It's also a feud we have seen before and it is almost, pound-for-pound the exact same build as the one they had before. Jey showed some fine babyface fire but it was for a belt that nobody believes that he can win. It was hardly the Guerrero/Lesnar promo.

This was probably my match of the night.

Even though they teased the prospect of some shenanigans happening at the end of the encounter with a lot Damage CTRL micro-angles happening in the background with Kairi being taken out, Bayley being at ringside and Asuka still injured. I mean, forget the babyface turn of her own creation that Dakota Kai has been on for some time. There is also the shadow of Becky Lynch lingering.

Nothing interesting happened at the end of it. There were no heel turns or face turns or any event at all. Lyra Valkyria won clean and Dakota Kai shook her hand and that was it. I don't know why they interviewed Bayley in the crowd in her hometown and had it be for nothing.

However, none of this stopped the meeting from being an excellent wrestling match.

This moment was legitimately terrifying but I don't think anyone was hurt.

It was actually quite a Japanese women's match. A lot of lock ups and holds and, unlike a lot of the other women in the WWE, the two of them were not afraid to properly hit each other. The crowd really bought Dakota Kai's babyface desperation when she hit her finisher and Valkyria narrowly escaped the ring. Compared to the Penta/Gable match, this was relatively short. Short and sweet. Speaking of Penta, Lyra Valkyria hit what now looks like a very similar finishing move to Penta. If it was McMahon, I would await a tedious shake-up of manoeuvres because only one person is allowed to do one thing. Hopefully, this doesn't become an issue.

Anyway, Lyra Valkyria won and the Sephiroth 3:16 sign will be forever in the background of that image of her lifting the belt. Oh well.

The New Day feuding with Rey Mysterio and Rey Mysterio alone isn't a great outlook for the prospect of this heel run. I like them and I like their new heel look but feuding with Rey Mysterio just does not bode well because Mysterio will always win that feud. They are firmly in the background whilst The War Raiders are feuding with The Judgement Day with the belts in the picture.

The Miz vs. Sami Zayn was forgettable. Bog-standard RAW TV match. Nobody understands this feud with Karrion Kross. He has Stockholm syndrome or maybe he doesn't. He has supposedly been changed by Kross but his gimmick is exactly the same. He turned heel prior to joining the Final Testament but joined them against their will? Has he joined the Final Testament at all? Nothing is particularly clear about this and I don't know really know or care where they are going with this. Pat McAfee called Sami Zayn's finisher "The Blue Thunder Dome"

It did finish with an all-time Helluva Kick but the match was boring and pointless.

There was a cringe fuckboy promo about Logan Paul for two weeks in the row. They're going to regret this when he loses the lawsuit. This was then followed up by my most loathed segment, The Signs of the Night. Get rid of this. Whenever Maffew Gregg puts these in BotchaMania, I fast-forward it.

And if this review couldn't get any fucking longer and even more negative, we had a town hall segment that achieved quite literally, nothing at all.

Rhea ran through her catchphrases. Nia Jax, hot off the heels of losing a No. 1 Contenders Match on Friday, interrupted with basically the exact same promo she cut on that aforementioned Friday night. She did generic carny heel routines about the hometown and about Bayley. Bayley who was in the audience the whole time, came into the segment and before you knew it, the newly crowned world heavyweight champion was pushed to the background. Nia Jax and Bayley did their traditional to-and-fro. They scuffled and Jax was kicked out of the ring.

That was it. That was the segment. It announced nothing. It set up nothing. It achieved nothing. Pointless segment.

I know that it's supposed to be a treat to get a street fight main event on television but from my experience, they are usually a big load of nothing. Yet we fall for it every time. To compound my annoyance more, they did my least favourite category of street fight which is when they go into the crowd to fight for most of the match. It's great for the arena but it never looks that good on television. The footage is always unclear and you can't really see what's happening. Production is often indecisive of what camera to pick.

AND THEN

After quite a good high spot where Cole couldn't decide quite what to call a 'table', the match slowed all the way down whilst they pretended that Finn Balor was genuinely hurt. I said to my friend whilst we were watching this together that "If this is supposed to be real then fair enough; accidents happen. But if this is a worked moment, they are dragging it on a bit too long". Again. Running theme. Wasting my time.

But Finn Balor compounded medical science by somehow tricking who are supposedly trained paramedics into thinking he needed to go on a stretcher and they put the fakest neck brace that I have ever seen in my life on.

This show only ended up being two and a half hours long but it could easily have been only two hours with all the piddling crap they forced onto my television screen. I don't enjoy being negative but this show bored the piss out of me at almost every possible instant. The show is supposed to be three hours long and they don't know how to fill it.

It was better than last week's show definitely but not by a hell of a lot. SmackDown was far more sensibly paced and the time was all the more valuable apparently. I understand and appreciate that this has been the case for a long time but I only live and hope that things will change and improve.

The show definitely had it's moments and it's moments were often between the ropes and bells. Apart from the last match, they didn't put enough weight on the outcome of this match. If it was a replay, I would naturally skip every backstage segment if I had the choice.

Damien Priest won conclusively by the way. Just thought I'd mention that. Dunno where Finn Balor goes after this. I think a lot of people need new enemies.

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Jan 10th "Business as Usual" - SmackDown REVIEW

A/N: This review is already 4 nights out of date. The January 13th Edition of Monday Night RAW will be reviewed in due course.

Something I picked up on immediately were how many signs were up.

Are signs back? Let's hope so because I'm only 25 and I'm already sick of everybody's phones raised high in the air in lieu of the ocean of homemade signs every week. There was a fair few in the last show too. Maybe now, they are ungoverned by Television committees but that is just speculation on my part.

And it starts with my least favourite trope in recent years...

The recap.

It's fucking on-demand now too so they have even less reason to do this. To add insult to wasting my time, they replayed Hulk Hogan's catchphrase with cheers in the background as if we all have brains made of cheese and couldn't possibly remember four days ago.

The show begins proper with a Paul Heyman town hall promo which, in only a few words, convinced me that Roman Reigns would actually win the Royal Rumble more so than John Cena did in 10 minutes. It only speaks to his rhythm of speech and selling of character. It is interrupted by what is fast becoming my favourite heel archetype in wrestling if you can even label them a heel. Kevin Owens whom, from his perspective, is justifying in his own thoughts and feelings on the scenario as it is happening in front of him. It allows the audience to feel conflicted because they relate to the emotions of the character in a more realistic way. More of this please.

A few things that were strange about how this segment concluded. The first of which was the absence of Tanga Loa which tells you exactly what the company thinks of him. Jacob Fatu and Tama Tonga came out to kill Paul Heyman with an incredibly slow tenacity as it took an eternity for Jimmy Uso to come out and make the save which was a failed effort. However, an unnamed referee came out to make the save and it looked like he was angled for a superkick or something. He stanced up like he was going to deliver his finishing move and I actually didn't realize that he wasn't a wrestler. Not until he listlessly waved his arms around to no avail before eating one on the chin.

Kenny Dykstra was also namedropped in this segment which made me feel old.

It was a bog-standard "Bloodline invades and then they get theirs" segment and I don't really know why this feud is happening. The only hook is if Cody Rhodes' moral compass is actually in jeopardy as the token hero and KO is the perfect foil for this because I believe he will be proven correct. It's a compelling feud but it's much of a muchness segment-to-segment. I enjoyed the ridiculousness of Jacob Fatu being chased out by a bunch of Gamestop employees and being eventually saved by the Manager, LA Knight.

I like little things like that because it makes the locker room feel more like a living universe whereas before, every backstage segment felt trapped within itself and nothing else happened around the three walls, so to speak. Everyone is in character. It works.

Chelsea Green and Piper Niven might be my favourite double act in wrestling today and I know I'm biased but I can't help but feel pleased for Piper Niven after she clearly put up with a lot of terrible script. I would argue that now, she has been utilized better than ICW or any other British Indie. Her personality has really shone through with this angle and I can't get enough of it.

Anyway, Chelsea Green and Michin had a match.

I have nothing to report other than Chelsea Green wrestles like it's a video game and what I mean by that is that she knows the count-out and reversal meta. Chelsea won, surprising nobody.

What I'm glad about is Smackdown navigating slowly back to their heritage in tag-team wrestling. It happens once every so often but hopefully it sticks this time because they usually give it up after three weeks.

This was the ideal tag match for SmackDown's debut on Netflix. Los Garza and Pretty Deadly never disappoint in the ring when they are actually used every couple of months. It's just hard to find direction for the lot of them. It's been a while since they have properly crafted a tag team feud that doesn't involve a token quest for the belts. It's a shame because this was a good match for being heel vs. heel and only three or four minutes. Let's hope it goes somewhere. The cynical part of me feels like Legado Del Phantasma will run out of gas once again.

It took a while but Shinsuke Nakamura has had a proper reinvention where it looks like he will have some direction. I've seen a lot of bashing of this new look but I can't get enough of it.

What I will say at this point because it troubles me and it probably troubles others too and it's nothing to do with the match at hand, is that I was halfway through watching the raw livestreamed file that contained the episode as it went out on Netflix. However, as the week has continued, the footer has changed to "Edited from a previous livestream". Something is now missing or changed and I won't be able to tell what unless someone out there has specifically documented it.

Now, I don't mind them censoring stuff or fixing audio problems or other technical mishaps because wrestling has been like that since I was a boy. The live product is the live product. Anything can happen and all that business. The replay is the replay. It will probably go black-and-white when someone bleeds, they'll freezeframe chairshots that look like they're going for the brain.

HOWEVER, when I returned to finish the episode, the time was in the same place but the show was in a different place. Have they removed something? What have they removed? It must be looked into and you probably know by now. It just bothers me. I want the option at least, to see the show as it happened.

Anyway, enough whining. This was a surprisingly good match and by that, I mean it was surprising for me because I thought I was getting tired of LA Knight but he always reminds you that he is good in the ring because you always forget. It was good character work from Shinsuke Nakamura because he wasn't wrestling like how heel Nakamura did the first time he turned heel in the WWE. He was slithering and aggressive and bought out the technical, tactical side of him that we've all enjoyed from his work in Japan - reigned in obviously.

I have to begrudgingly admit that the finish worked. The heels ripped the good match away and it was a comeback from earlier. Made sense. The reason it is begrudging because it was a little too much Cody/Bloodline business on this show already and it's only been an hour. It's not over yet either. It served to announce that the two pairs will face each other and I hope you don't blame me for thinking that it won't have a finish to write home about. I'm trying to care.

So this match started with Grayson Waller single-handedly out-tag-teaming the well-seasoned MCMG. At first, I was against all the shit that the fuckboys got in at the beginning but I realized something.

If the was the Dudley Boyz against say, Heath Slater and Rhyno back in 2016 or whenever it could've or would've happened, I would be applauding the Dudleys for putting them over so much. I think I have to accept that whilst the Motor City Machine Guns will have their day in the WWE, they can't be quite so dominant that it's just silly.

I think a lot of those feelings are post-McMahon withdrawal syndrome where I am over-intellectualizing them now finally booking wrestling sensibly. A-Town Down Under were booked to be competent tag wrestlers but ultimately, MCMG had the superior synchronicity - that was the story. Simple but effective booking whilst the underlying story of Austin Theory living in Grayson Waller's shadow lingers in the background. Full marks.

It's only 2 hours in and I feel like more has happened on SmackDown already. My review is noticeably longer than RAW's Netflix outing.

They really made the title change for Tiffany Stratton seem like a real Hollywood deal all throughout the show and promised the title celebration in a way that made it seem like it would have a main event slot.

But then it just happened near the beginning of the third hour out of nowhere.

Unfortunately, it has to be said that Tiffany Stratton cut a ropey promo in front of a live crowd where she had quite a shaky voice for most of it and she never really said anything that is worth listening to. I'm quite a big fan of Tiffany Stratton in the ring and the persona that she has but this was no good. Nia Jax cut her off and no-one really wanted to see her but in a change-the-channel type of way. This feud hasn't ticked any of the boxes and the only thing that this angle is surviving is because audiences clearly want to see Tiffany Stratton at the top.

It's lucky several other more likeable talent rescued the segment with a quick little melee that didn't outstay it's welcome and Stratton wasn't booked to look stupid - which was a fear of mine. It set up a match that began straight away. Not too much to say about this;- it was satisfactory. They need to get to the women's rumble which could prove to be the more interesting and exciting affair for the second year in a row.

What's frustrating is that all we've heard all week is all the men announcing themselves for the men's Royal Rumble match (I have watched the January 13th RAW as I'm writing this). Yet, it's as though the women's rumble isn't even happening. It's an easy time to build angles and suspense but instead, all the women are coming out and saying they want the belt right this minute. I don't know if they are distracted by the mid-card belts that they've just introduced. It would be easy for me to say with hindsight that the belts could've waited until after WrestleMania.

It's a shame because I think women's wrestling right now is EASILY the best that it's ever been and it's being booked underwhelmingly by both of the big companies. It's hard not to be frustrated.

It's also a shame that Bianca Belair clearly has more chemistry with Naomi over the wooden Jade Cargill (apart from the moment close to the end where Bianca was trying to avoid accidentally being on top of Naomi to pin her). Maybe, they'll work that into an angle. The sooner that they make her the monster heel, the better.

A good, fun spot-fest. Bayley will surely have a good programme with Tiffany.

Carmelo Hayes continues to be displayed like a nerd.

I know I did praise the return of the signs in the crowds but this "Signs of the Week" segment needs to fucking bike it straight down the mountain. I have nothing really to say about it. It's just lame.

The one thing that I like about the Bloodline angle is the guarantee of some excellent Jacob Fatu. He is fiendishly brilliant at what he does and I very much look forward to him being in the final four in the Rumble. One day, he is going to win the big one.

It must be said that the crowd weren't that into this. Like me, Jacob Fatu controlled the attention. That's saying something because Tama Tonga is a magnificent character and ring presence. It's nice to see him finally getting some love on a huge western stage but even then, he is being outshone by Fatu through no fault of his own. Everyone was joining in on Tama Tonga's whacky laugh and Jacob Fatu's new catchphrase ("I love you, Solo!"). They are an electric heel act.

The problem I had with this match is a problem I have with a lot of these recent Cody matches is that I can't really buy into how pissed off he is supposed to be. It comes off as so forced sometimes and it's mainly because I don't understand his motivations for why he cares about any of this. The feud he is supposed to be having is with Kevin Owens and he isn't the only one this is happening with. It feels like a significant portion of the main-eventers are intertwined with the Bloodline in some way. Seth Rollins, Drew McIntyre and CM Punk, a trio of mortal enemies with each other, SOMEHOW would get onto the Bloodline!

It was a house-show tag match which hasn't been the first time this has happened recently but at least it went somewhere and has story to build off of. I can't help but feel though that if this match did not contain the WWE champion, it wouldn't be the main event. This show was tag match heavy too. I thought Jimmy Uso Vs. Tama Tonga would've been exciting enough on it's own if I'm being totally honest, reader.

But overall, it was an alright-to-quite-a-good show. Definitely not a bad one by any means and it was refreshing to watch a proper bit of wrestling television after Monday Night RAW's Gala debut on Netflix. Decent matches all-around. A little too much Bloodline but I never felt like my time was wasted and I'm not spoiling anything there but the January 13th edition of RAW was...

It was the opposite.

Stay tuned for that.

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Jan 6th - "The Netflix Era Begins" RAW REVIEW

I'll cut to the chase; I felt like a complete moron watching this show and was treated as such. It became immediately obvious that I was not the target audience for the Netflix Premier for Monday Night RAW's new platform. They wanted (hoped) that Netflix would bring in a ton of new eyes to the product that found it previously inaccessible despite WWE being available throughout the world broadly speaking.

They might be right - there probably is some people watching wrestling for the first time on the other side of the screen. I doubt it's enough to do a soft-reset of the show's programming.

Showing screenshots of the actual programme will prove difficult as they have utilized Netflix's anti-piracy measures.

Image courtesy of WWE

You can call the opening canvas shot artsy if you would be so inclined but personally, all I found it to be was time-consuming. Triple H cut a generic promo which would be spoken through the mouths of various big-gig wrestling personae throughout the night, including one particular incident which was my own personal main event but we will get to that later.

One that we will get to right now is when The Rock came out and cut his version of this same promo and buried the previous WrestleMania build's storyline deep beneath the Earth. I also believe that this cements The Rock's retraction from any big future build to any Mania, near or far. I could be wrong and people have told me that I am wrong and that there is mischief yet to be afoot. Again, time-consuming. He also took the rub of being the first to swear on Netflix which pissed me off.

Image Courtesy of WWE

The Tribal Combat match was perhaps rightfully slotted into what is essentially a faux-pay-per-view (or 'Premium Live Event' if you were born after 2005) because they didn't do enough to earn anything more. Hopefully, this is the "Tribal Combat"/"Bloodline Rules" stipulation put to to bed now because I'm tired of them pretending that it's anything other than a pantomime hardcore match where you're only waiting for whoever is going to interrupt the action with hijinks and shenanigans.

Roman Reigns vs Solo Sikoa comfortably ended this feud and I don't really know where they go with Solo Sikoa now. On one hand, it makes whatever build he had a complete waste of time but on the other, he never really properly captivated as a heel and has been outshined by Tanga, Tama and Jacob. The highlight of his reign as tribal chief was when everyone found out he hated maths at school. I assume there's going to some Wyatt Sicks business because his faction is probably going to get broken up. The Rock, again, conclusively ended any possible avenue for his supposed money dream match with Roman Reigns by declaring him top boy as the segment petered out without incident.

Image courtesy of JustJared

It took no time at all to get on my tits any time they cut to anyone even remotely noteworthy and I don't want to pick on Richard Gadd here but it felt like they were clawing for the clock on every occasion. I'm a wrestling fan. I don't care about all these actors and rappers and tiktokkers. It was worse than any WrestleMania or SummerSlam. At some points, they showed ACTUAL CHAMPIONS in the crowd. I get they are going for "Mainstream news! Please cover us!" and you're supposed to react to the champions like VIPs as well.

Speaking of VIPs, John Cena came out and proceeded to bore the piss out of me with the most predictable promo of all time. He tickled our fancies and then he fancied a tickle.

Image courtesy of WWE, taken from The Daily Record

He's probably going to win it, isn't he? It would be a huge shock if he didn't and I would actually give them a huge amount of credit.

Something I wanted to talk about which I have no other place for is their elaborate set-up. They had these incredibly annoying spotlights highlighting every seat in the stadium like it was a fucking spaceship or something. I have no idea why they did it but it reminded me of poorly rendered stadiums that you see in gambling adverts. The commentary table also had these incredibly irritating LED lights along the bottom which was distinctly reminiscent of tacky game shows. I think wrestling looks it's best on television when it's cut down to the bare essentials a la NXT in the mid-to-late teens.

I have to smack my forehead with an open palm whenever I write things like that to remind myself that this particular show isn't for me. It's breaking the bank and trying it's utmost for the average true crime enjoyer whom presumably loves O'Shea Jackson, Gabriel Iglesias and Macauley Culkin.

Speaking of mainstream attention:

Image courtesy of WWE

I mean this with complete seriousness that Rhea Ripley is their bridge. She's connected the gays back into wrestling and about time too. You can tell they know this too because they put the belt straight back on her when the world was watching! In retrospect, the idea of Rhea Ripley losing this would've been disastrous. A lot of people know who Rhea Ripley is and seeing her lose once again doesn't bear thinking about it. To put the nail in the coffin, this match in every single definition was a means to an end and thank fuck, frankly. Ripley has outgrown it but they still wheeled Undertaker out to steal her thunder because they can't let us have nice things.

To be honest, I laughed uproariously when he came out just because it was so ridiculous and random. It's not really all that bothersome.

Image courtesy of WWE, NBC

I didn't realize so many people were angry about this but the above image is from an article from Cageside Seats which labels Gunther as an afterthought in the Netflix debut. I was annoyed at the time mainly because Gunther isn't a character that needs explaining through words. You just have to watch a single match with him in it to get what he's about. However, it's obvious if you think about all the champions that they showed in the crowd throughout the night that Gunther just wasn't there and they needed some way to weave him in. Actually, not mentioning him at all would've made him an afterthought.

I also don't want to go through every backstage segment and stage-side interview because they were much of a muchness, truth be told. I liked the heel New Day segment mainly because it's like they were deliberately not trying on purpose.

Image courtesy of WWE

I barely remember anything about this match.

Travis Scott came out and vaped. That's all I remember. Death by roll-up. I could've done without this in my life. I am the same man now as I was before I watched this.

I don't really like the new referee attire if you're that desperate for commentary out of me. It reminds me of old football kits from the Scottish Premiership.

OH! I almost forgot...

Image courtesy of WWE

It wouldn't be unfair of me to say that this might've been the biggest disaster in wrestling in quite a long time. Definitely, the most disastrous cameo from the Hulkster and I include XWF and LiveLeak in that list. Above ALL else, it was the funniest moment in the whole show by far as Terry clocked in an easy 80/20 negative reaction from Los Angeles with about a hundred people popping maybe? In the face of this, Hogan resorted to plugging the beer that I am not quite sure of the name of. I think he forgot to say it. It surely can't be "Real American Beer" because that is irredeemably shit. Searching for a modicum of a cheer, he namedropped Randy Savage and Andre The Giant which is sure to win the Wrestling Observer Disgusting Promotional Tactic award when all is said and done. He posed. He ripped his shirt off and then he fucked off down to Gorilla, clearly fizzing with rage.

Ludicrously, and somewhat predictably, this will be tarred and feathered with the politics of California when actually, it's brazenly obvious to any human being with a pinky's worth of cerebral action that folk are sick and tired of saying their prayers and prefer to eat their breakfast in their own time. He is routinely booed nowadays and if they were looking for trouble, they've found it because this was the most covered moment by "mainstream media".

So that begs the question... Did they engineer this deliberately?!

Image courtesy of WWE

Nope, they are just daft cunts.

On with the main event.

Image courtesy of WWE

This was the most looked-forward-to match of the night by leaps and bounds and I have to say that it was mildly disappointing. It reminded me of a couple of matches in recent memory: Uso Vs. Uso from just last year and Styles Vs. Nakamura from a few Manias ago. It felt like they were just starting up and the finish came from nowhere. Clean as a whistle, CM Punk is just better, I guess. After taking what I would say to be quite an unreasonable amount of moves with barely any offense on Rollins in return, Punk just hit his own finisher and won and that was it. It would be easy of me to reel off some excuse like they were short on time or that something went wrong and they had to improvise but they should know better. This wasn't "doing it on the night", we were sold this as being an extremely important match and it was a let-down.

The let-down is compounded by CM Punk cutting a top guy promo that reminded me of Robbie Williams in the sense that it was unearned and unwarranted tenacity for what was quite a mediocre showing. I like CM Punk by the way, I just thought this wasn't the desired home run. I don't see how this can continue beyond this. I'm waiting for either of them to turn heel and it did not happen here.

Image courtesy of WWE, Netflix

To conclude, like any pilot of any TV series that you like, the first one may be slightly iffy and not indictive of the full package. I'll be tuning in next week to see who the real RAW actually is behind this phony mask. A lot of people may have really loved this but it reeks a little of panic to me. I'm not the only one who was shuddered by the memory of Russo coming back to WCW and resetting everything. It wasn't that bad. They were extremely safe at the end of the day whilst trying to provide the wow factor, visually. I can't help but feel like they didn't have to do all that.

Time will tell. Roll on, Monday.

I won't be doing ratings because ratings are for idiots.