Oh god why am I doing this to myself. I know: I’m bored and need to write something semi provocative. This is how bad things are for me. Regardless, this Raw had a few things of note so I figured I might as well do another post. Here, they are broadcasting from Glasgow, Scotland. I will admit that the stadium they’re at looked great. Too bad the show felt more like a glorified house show with mostly filler and little in the way of story progression.
John Cena in Ring Segment
This is the main thing I wanted to talk about since I think they did a slightly better job than last week in pulling together some motivation for what John Cena is doing. I still think the whole thing is a mess designed because Cody can’t cut a good promo without a clearly defined villain. And John Cena reminds me a bit of Jeff Goldblum in The Fly where Seth Brundle justifies to himself while inebriated why he needs to enter the pod, which ultimately leads to his downfall. In the case of The Fly, only Jeff Goldblum could pull off a convincing enough act where you could believe him talking himself into performing the nonsensical act. With John Cena, it’s the same thing where the mangled logic of his situation works because Cena can deliver a convincing enough promo for the audience to believe it. Nonetheless, I still think the logic at the core makes no sense.
The main premise for Cena’s whole turn and situation is that it’s been an experiment. From the way Cena describes his disposition, it sounds almost as though this idea was done from the beginning. Beginning of what one might ask. Well, that’s where the logic starts getting cloudy. But he’s digging deep here in his history to make the issue personal as he brings up the original spinner belt that the fans shit on ages ago. From that he realizes that to destroy/harm wrestling he needs to take the heart of what matters to the fans which was the championship title back home. And on top of that he name drops Ric Flair to effectively cement his own legacy of having the most championships in wrestling.
And again, this whole thing is done well by Cena in terms of the presentation where he’s spelling out the motivation and his plans. However, it makes absolutely no sense for me just because it’s a way to tarnish his legacy and effectively tell everyone that he’s a phony from the beginning of his popularity surge. Contrast this to Hogan’s turn where Hogan explains being bored but more importantly how the fans themselves were the ones that turned again Hogan. And while behind the scenes, it was well known about Hogan’s ego that largely in part caused the WCW fans to boo him upon his arrival, Hogan still tried to portray the old Hogan and hold his head up high. So the story is similar but there’s some major gaps in logic about Cena’s story where there’s too much of a dissonance.
Of course, none of this could be left alone so Cody comes out. And as I explained before, Cody promos well when he’s got a clear villain. This time it sounds like the writers realized that the story last week needed more and this week Cody realizes that the Cena of old is gone. But where did that Cena go? It still seems spurious to me and there’s still the motivation gap that I don’t understand at the core.
The main motivation seems to be placed on the belt and Cena’s toxic relationship with his fans. But there’s still something far deeper that’s missing. Like the main issue I have is why would Cena want to come back at all if he’s clearly this unhappy? You could argue that he was receiving great responses up until kicking Cody in the nads. He was making movies in Hollywood and probably will continue to do so. And if he’s retiring why even bother doing a tour if he’s been unhappy? In short, why do something you clearly hate?
If Cena said, he received millions and a contract with some new movie (where he plays a villain) and more roles than he could count, I could get behind the turn. Or if he said that he wanted to get revenge on his way out on all those ungrateful fans who refused to support him when he needed them the most by embarrassing the new golden child and retiring as the best, then I can understand. But he needs to delineate this part. I was going to write that taking the championship belt home with him means nothing these days because the WWE frequently brags on social media about creating new belts all the time. So how does Cena taking a physical belt home that the WWE can replace hurt the fans and company? John is trying to use symbolic language but the practical effects ring hollow.
I’m not opposed to John Cena’s heel turn. I get why they’re doing it. But the logic behind everything doesn’t add up for me. It’s still missing something major and Cody isn’t good enough to bring that part out of John.
Jey & Jimmy Uso vs. Austin Theory & Grayson Waller
Jey doesn’t do his usual schtick of coming down the ramp but actually gets to tag with his brother. Pretty bland match but there was one spot where Jey slipped I think in trying to attack Gunther. The announcers made mention of it and later Jimmy would sit down with Jey to address it as well as the previous week’s botch. So I’m lead to believe that Jey didn’t botch this one. However, the main story with Jey (especially after Gunther showed up) is that Jey can’t beat Gunther in his current mental state.
Lyra Valkyria vs. Raquel Rodriguez
IC Women’s Title match at stake. Lyra just isn’t good to me. She just seems so generic. Someone once told me about Zack Wylde from Ozzy back in the day that Zack sounded like a generic GIT person. In a similar vein, Lyra is a generic NXT wrestler to me. I’m more impressed by Raquel. Also, I found out that Raquel is 6′ supposedly which possibly makes her the tallest female wrestler in the WWE. Lyra won with a surprise roll up which is what you might expect from these two.
The post match saw Liv attacking Lyra with Bayley making the save. I’m guessing they’ll add some generic tag team match between Lyra and Raquel vs Lyra and Bayley next week. But Bayley seems to insert herself everywhere for no good reason. She’s like generic Elmer’s glue.
Iyo / Bianca / Rhea / Adam Pearce Contract in Ring Fiasco
More stupid crap from these three. Main thing is that Rhea is getting her re-match soon while Iyo wants to be taken more seriously. There’s a stupid brawl that comes out of this and Adam is reluctant to give a three way. If Rhea loses to Iyo, does that mean Rhea is off Wrestlemania? I don’t want to see another three way but I’m guessing the only reason they’re even having something like this is to avoid having Rhea get pinned at WM and put the belt on Bianca. Either way, bleh.
Dragon Lee vs El Grande Americano
They’re doing is Chad Gable El Grande thing. He gave Pearce a doctor’s note and effectively called in sick but wanted El Grande to show up for a match again Dragon Lee instead. I don’t know where they’re going with this but it’s stupid. I hated a similar gimmick done with Brian Pillman when he was the Yellow Dog and feuding against Barry Windham, but that one kinda made sense especially since Brian was a babyface at that point. They never explained why Chad has a luchadore fetish. But he got the win here. One thing I will note is that El Grande gave Dragon Lee a scary looking release german suplex from the apron onto the floor. I don’t know how either guy was not paralyzed by that. Also, El Grande used the Ankle Lock where the announcers pointed out the other wrestlers who used that move as a finish (which included Ivy Nile that Michael Cole almost left out)
CM Punk in Ring Segment
This was another segment like Seth Rollins from the previous week to announce that they’re having a contract signing at Smackdown in London. Probably, the big thing from Punk was winking into the camera after saying that Heyman isn’t just Roman’s wise man. Also, Punk remained obscure in talking about exactly what he wanted, which most likely is the top bill for one of the nights at Wrestlemania. It’s obvious Cody vs Cena is going to be the final match on night 2. So Seth vs Punk vs Roman will probably be the top match at WM night 1 where Punk gets Heyman to tell Jey to let him have that spot or something along those lines. I don’t know how they’ll pull something off like that logically because you would think the main event should be the primary title holder. In the case of the WWE with two major titles, one show should have Gunther on top. So this whole thing is odd. Now, that I think about it, I wish it was Punk vs Gunther instead of Gunther vs Jey. Or maybe…..
Bron Breakker vs Penta
The other IC title match. Well, it is between continents… anyway, not a great match. Penta’s matches don’t excite me because my standard for luchadores will always be Mysterio Jr and no one has come close to him. Penta is definitely better here than what I’ve seen in AEW just because he’s slowed down and sells more. But the flows and moves aren’t things that really entice me. Eventually, Dominick and Carlito show up and Dom interferes to cause the DQ finish. Balor shows up to give Bron a few chairshots and tells Dom to do the same. After Dom delivers a few chairshots, he gives the chair to Penta and Penta looks around then tosses the chair to Dom so he could give Dom a shitty kick in the face with the chair. That tees off Balor to attack Penta and a beatdown commences where Balor looks at Dom disappointed but realigns the Judgment Day.
So let me say this. This is one of those rare occasions where I wanted an “unexpected” turn by Penta. I don’t really care for this guy to be honest but if he turned heel and joined the Judgment Day things wouldn’t feel so goddamn static on this stupid show. It’s obvious they want to push Penta to the moon but he’s so goddamn boring to me as a character. And the Judgment Day are boring as fuck. Only Liv and Raquel are interesting from them because they’re a decent team while everyone else in the Judgment Day are JTTS. They do need someone to make that shitty group look special and Balor doesn’t interest me in his current role because he does nothing and you learn to expect that he’s never going to win anything useful because the WWE wants to push someone fresh.
Final Thoughts
Not a great show but there were moments where I had a lot of thoughts in terms of general frustrations that caused me to write anything at all. The show itself was bland as fuck. Also, a much more muted Pat McAffee was back and a lot more favorable towards the foreign audience. I’m guessing someone had a nice long sit down with him to avoid having him bring his politics into the announcing. But if it weren’t for the fact that these European audiences were hot because of the freshness of the market and TV aspect, these shows would probably come off dead in front of an American audience besides the wrestlers’ ring entrances.