WWE Raw Review: The End Of The Road To WrestleMania
By: Tim Grzecki
@tjetski971
First I want to acknowledge I haven't done one of these in a couple weeks. Honestly, the product has come off as uninspired and that left me uninspired to write about it. But WrestleMania is this Sunday and therefore it is time to hunker down and do work.
Let's start where Raw left off. Brock Lesnar and Roman Reigns both clutching the title and mean mugging each other…WHAT?? You got a guy in Lesnar that is billed as a beast. You got a guy in Reigns that is billed as a bad ass. On Sunday they face off at WrestleMania for the biggest prize in your company…and they hug a belt and stare at each other? Where's the physicality? Why didn't Lesnar explode on Reigns when he ripped the belt away from him? Why didn't Reigns jack Lesnar in the jaw and then take the title? This is the go home Raw for the biggest event of the Pro Wrestling year, and it ended so anticlimactically.
Now to the beginning. Finally they have Sting speak. Yes he technically spoke last week, but 35 seconds on The Network doesn't count. Just from the way Sting uses his voice you can tell his promos are from the old school, where most guys half yelled their entire spiel. But it's Sting so it was cool. I can't lie I was marking out like crazy. I don't even remember what he said and I don't care, it was still awesome. That is until Stephanie McMahon came out. Why is she coming out instead of HHH? Why did she talk longer than Sting? She has no part in this feud. Her presence was not needed. Finally HHH comes down, stare down between the two, HHH with the sledgehammer, Sting the black baseball bat, it was so classic. I'm comfortable with these two not getting physical, it can wait till Sunday. I am NOT comfortable with Lillian Garcia announcing Sting the wrong way. If I recall she said "Please welcome Sting." Apparently no one informed her of the proper way to announce him "THIS IS STING!!" Get it right at Mania, get it right.
Quick hits:
- Two randomly thrown together tag matches to promote two matches? Feels like lazy booking.
- Divas match was good and even though we've seen the create dissention between teammates angle a thousand times I can't be mad at it. It makes sense which is always a good thing.
- Did Hulk Hogan really make a pot joke? Guess they're not super concerned with the rating for the show anymore.
- Rusev vs Jack Swagger again? YAWN! It was nice however to see Rusev destroy John Cena after the match. Crazy how well it works when a guy who is booked to be unstoppable and a monster is actually allowed to look like an unstoppable monster.
- The "interspecies match" really happened…again…
- Bray Wyatt continues to kill it on the microphone to build the feud with The Undertaker. Still don't think it serves any purpose. Still think The Undertaker should have been on Raw at least once. Also when is the last time Bray had a match? Shouldn't he be dominating people in the ring as well?
- Do think that Seth Rollins should have gotten the upper hand on Randy Orton tonight. The physicality between the two has been too one sided since Orton's return for my tastes.
Dolph Ziggler vs Daniel Bryan is just fantastic. Wish they would have booked the two of them to face off at WrestleMania solo instead of throwing them into the Intercontinental Ladder Match.
