RAW In A Nutshell: Lexington Ready To Rumble!

Another week means another RAW In A Nutshell. This week, RAW is making a stop in Kentucky. So how about RAW In A Nutshell from the Bluegrass State? That sounds like a fun time to me! Lexington is ready to Rumble, with the Royal Rumble rapidly approaching. Monday’s show gives us the return of The Beast, for starters. Our announced main event is the unique fist fight featuring six RAW Superstars. It promises to be a loaded Nutshell, for sure. There is plenty to get into, so without any further delay, let’s crack open this RAW In A Nutshell!

Best Match of the night:

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before…but I have to go with Aleister Black and Buddy Murphy. There is a chemistry between these two, they are just consistently delivering good to great matches.

Worst match of the night:

Aside from dumping on the Rowan versus jobber waste of time, which we got again this week…I think the biggest issue I had was the Charlotte/Sarah Logan match. WWE either has no plan for Logan, or doesn’t want to use her in any meaningful way. She’s got talent and a different style and vibe, so there should be something to figure out there. This match, however, was not it.

Star of the Night

So many different options here. Black and Murphy would be easy. But then, so too would any of the men in the six man main event.

I feel like going a little different and running with Drew McIntyre. I like how they are moving him forward. I enjoyed him as a face in NXT, and I think that version of Drew would play well on the main roster.

Spot of the Night:

I don’t think there was one that I could single out. I will say there were plenty of hard spots in the main event, however.

Jobber of the Night:

Hmm…choices here….

Rowan’s unnamed guy gets a mention…though no name, so what does it matter?

Then we had Sarah Logan, she was basically jobbed out. Maybe she got in a little offense, but the match was over in like two minutes.

I think, however, I shall go with the Singh Brothers for this one.

Holy Sh** Moment of the Night:

Well, it looks like Rollins might be building a full-on heel stable, no? First the Authors of Pain, and now Buddy Murphy? The Murphy twist was indeed unexpected as part of our main event. I won’t go so far as to say nWo or anything, but it’s been a while since we had a good and properly sized heel stable. The Shield was good, of course, but they only ever were three men. Right now, whatever Rollins’ merry band of misfits is called, they have four (and counting).

LOL Moment of the night:

Folks, if you did not see the segment featuring Brock Lesnar, R-Truth and Paul Heyman, do yourself a favor and go watch it.

Seriously, some of the funniest stuff we’ve been given on RAW in recent months. Truth was gold, Lesnar continues to be underrated in certain facets of his ring persona and Heyman is as good as it gets.

Lesnar had great mannerisms as Truth was stumbling through his “I’m in the Rumble, I’m out of the Rumble” spiel, as did Heyman. Really enjoyed that segment.

Noteworthy Moment:

I think the big one was Murphy aligning with Rollins’ crew. It will be interesting to see where things go from here. Samoa Joe and Kevin Owens works, but how much does Big Show have in the tank?

In case you missed it, Mojo Rawley became the new 24/7 Champion.

Overall lowlights:

Pains me to see some talent mis-used (Rowan needs a real opponent soon, and Sarah Logan deserves much better)

And see, I basically made it through without having to cover the Asuka green mist, the typical contract signing, or anything about Lana and Lashley…

Overall highlights:

Drew McIntyre in his current iteration is great. The more I see this, the more I would love to see him dispatch Brock out of the Rumble match and have him go on to face Lesnar in Tampa. I could totally get behind a McIntyre-as-WWE-Champion push.

The six man was short, but was likely better than it had any right to be.

Murphy and Black. Again. Really good stuff.

After the final bell:

We have but one more RAW before the Rumble itself, and there’s still plenty to hype between now and then. This show, however, was I think a solid one and I think RAW in a Nutshell will reflect that.

Also worth at least pointing out that, whatever the ratings end up being, it wasn’t a weak show…but it did go head to head against what seems to have been a good college football game. That said, RAW now has nothing major to deal with head to head until September, with both college and pro football out of the way on Mondays.