RAW In A Nutshell: Shuffling The Decks Yet Again?

Good day everyone! The big buzz heading into this edition of Monday Night RAW was all about what was going on with Roman Reigns, and why on Earth he would declare his intentions of showing up on RAW. After all, he was shuffled off to SmackDown a few weeks back during the 2019 version of the Superstar Shakeup. But, will we see WWE shuffling the decks yet again? After all, ratings have not been good, and Vince McMahon is hyper-sensitive to those ratings lately. Let’s crack open this Nutshell and find out!

Best Match of the night:

Perhaps the lone shining star of the night, we got Kofi Kingston and Daniel Bryan as our match of the night.

Worst match of the night:

Can someone explain to me why we had to see the Lucha House Party match? I mean, fine, some neat spots, but three guys who aren’t players for ANYTHING on RAW, against three jobbers? That time could be better spent on other things, to be blunt.

I mean, the Lacey Evans match sucked something hard and fierce too…but at least there was an ulterior motive. Evans had the women from RAW going to the MITB match and played it all together. Plus Becky Lynch showed up, so there’s that.

Star of the Night

I have to give it to Kofi Kingston. Nice win on an unexpected stage.

Spot of the Night:

Just because I have to crap all over it…but, Strowman gently drops Zayn into a dumpster backstage. That dumpster is conveniently scheduled to be emptied out at that precise time. And of course, we have a good minute or so where the camera is on Braun or the truck, but not the dumpster…so anyone with a semi-functioning brain knows full well Zayn wasn’t in the dumpster when the contents were emptied.

So, big spots are all well and good…but there’s something about this one that was over the top in not a good way. Totally not necessary. Completely stupid, to be honest.

Jobber of the Night:

Those three local talents that were unlucky enough to be dispatched by Lucha House Party. Or, as Corey Graves put it…they just defeated “the best wrestling talent to ever come out of Cincinnati, Ohio“.

Lacey Evans had one too…

And hey, why not…No Way Jose and his dancing fools were all jobbers to Lars Sullivan.

Holy Sh** Moment of the Night:

Vince McMahon introducing his “wild card rules”. I mean, sure it is one way to explain why, suddenly, you have members of SmackDown Live showing up on RAW.

Though, it’s a convenient thing, when you consider that Roman Reigns began declaring his intentions to be on RAW this week like, two days ago. So, was Vince just jumping on the bandwagon, or would we find out another member of SmackDown was part of his 3 (next to Kofi and  Daniel Bryan).

It was an interesting opening segment…but perhaps WWE needs to examine things more deeply? Only so many times you can have three “random” blue brand guys on RAW, or vice versa, before the novelty and possible ratings boost goes away.

By the time the night was over, by the way, we had how many blue brand stars come out? Roman Reigns, Kofi Kingston, Daniel Bryan, Elias, Shane McMahon…I mean, I hate math, but I can tell that is way more than the three covered by the so-called “wild card rule”. Why bother having rules…and McMahon changed it to four to cover Lars going show to show, apparently.

Botch of the night:

Can I call the show a botch? I mean, having to call an audible a few weeks after the Superstar Shakeup? Sure seems like someone botched something somewhere, does it not?

LOL Moment of the night:

Vince McMahon said “no XFL crossover to WWE”. And as users shared with the world on Twitter, we have…XFL ads on the Tron at WWE events.

“There will be no crossovers between WWE and XFL” #Raw #Xfl pic.twitter.com/I0AIfFjIhT

— Robby Mobley (@HeymanBeast64) May 7, 2019

Now, sure, it’s “just” ads, and honestly I’ve never been to a live RAW to know whether or not WWE routinely sells ad space on the Tron otherwise…but I am going to guess they don’t usually.

Noteworthy Moment:

So, we figured it was not if but when, and tonight was that when. As in, when Joe finally got close to Rey Mysterio’s son, and now it’s really just a matter of time before we see Dominik wrestling, isn’t it? Not sure how I feel about that. Then again, given how much taller he is than his dad, I still can’t come to terms with him being Rey’s son.

Overall lowlights:

The wild card/invasion thing? Sorry, not feeling it. Either have two shows, or don’t have two shows.

Also, speaking of wild cards, what happened to the women? Only three blue brand men were supposed to show up tonight…no women? Becky Two Belts would have been on RAW regardless, so she does not count. But apparently Shane and Elias don’t count, and Lars scared Vince into making it 4 per night.

I am kind of conflicted about the Usos pranking of The Revival. Sure, on one hand, you had to laugh at the body language by Dash and Dawson-a great acting job for sure. On the flip side, considering WWE being on the anti-bullying kick, and PG, what message does it send? I mean, two guys bullying two others, getting them to dump bottles of water down their trunks?

I think we could do without it.

Overall highlights:

I am conflicted to even have highlights for this show. The main event was good, to be fair.

Much of the rest of the show just left me more confused about the overall direction of the shows than anything else…and that’s hard to feel great about.

After the final bell:

What this show needed, it was not going to get. When Drew McIntyre and Elias were beating down Roman Reigns, the building would have had the roof blown off had Dean Ambrose’s music hit and the Lunatic Fringe made the save. Heck, we didn’t even get Seth Rollins making that save. Seth was too tied up with AJ…

The reality is, I think fans want a few things-great content without all the junk (like, say, a Superstar being tossed into a dumpster?). They want fresh faces given a real opportunity-that’s as much guys like Ricochet and EC3 as it is WWE mending fences and bringing in someone unexpected like a CM Punk, or somehow getting Ambrose to come back (or, bringing back Ziggler even). They have options out there that DO NOT involve screwing up what few shreds of brand division remain.