Raw Reunion (7/22/19)

What’s up everybody? I thought that I might try something different tonight. I have been obsessively watching every Raw, Smackdown, and PPV the WWE has been putting out for the past few years, after falling off watching for quite some time before that. I have tossed around the idea of blogging about Wrestling since it has become such a big part of my life again and what better night to start than the Raw Reunion show which will have the greatest stars of all generations?

 

Intro – Cena & The Usos

Big match John coming out to hype out the crowd was a great way to get everything started. He is the only other wrestler besides Stone Cold Steve Austin & The Rock who can stake the claim as the legitimate face of the company for a generation. The Usos and Cena did a short but entertaining rap battle that was followed by a surprise appearance by The Uso’s pops Rikishi, the master of the Stink Face, which we may in fact see in action. That is because The Revival interrupted what would have been an epic dance break and were joined by D-Von Dudley who will take on the 3 Usos. After all this we cut to Jimmy “Mouth of the South” Hart and Hulk Hogan, just to make sure you know this will be a star studded night.

 

The Usos with Rikishi vs. The Revival with D-Von Dudley

After the break the announce team was joined by 2 time hall of famer, and 5 time, 5 time, 5 time, WCW Champion of the world, Booker T. I was obviously mistaking about Rikishi and D-Von actually being a part of the match, but they will be looking on from ringside and I am sure will become a part of the match at some point.

D-Von and Rikishi got into a shouting match at the end which caught the attention of Scott Dawson, who was in turn met with a Superkick and an Uso Splash for the 1-2-3. This was a great match to start off the night, and they were able to avoid the cringe worthy match restarts that they have been prone to having since Vince has instated the no wrestling during commercials rule.

Tori Wilson, Santino Morella, & Alicia Fox all showed up in another backstage segment that kept the whole star studded them rolling in a light-hearted bit. This lead to a determined looking Drew McIntyre who obviously has some business to settle after the commercial break. The more times they can do something like this to lead into the commercial break the better, tire

 

24/7 Title

R-Truth was at the Comic-Con and talking with Max Scoville of IGN before being rolled up by The Hurricane for a 2 count and then Drake Maverick for a 2 count as well. I hope this means that The Hurricane will be coming back into the WWE picture in some form as he was a favorite of mine back in his day. We come back to R- Truth and Carmella arguing with Maverick’s bitter wife only for Truth to be rolled up for the 3 count and Maverick to become the 24/7 champion once again. This is followed up quickly by The Godfather who tells everyone it is time for a ride on the Ho Train. Ahhh, memories.

 

Drew McIntyre & Cedric Alexander

Before this match could even come to a start it turned into an all out brawl on the outside as McIntyre was ready to prove a point after getting a unexpected loss by Alexander last week. McIntyre in the end left Alexander laying with a reverse Alabama Slam onto the side of the ring, yikes, that is a nasty move.

 

24/7 Title

We are greeted after the commercial break by Drake Maverick being scared out of his pants by the Boogeyman and he is promptly rolled up by the legend Pat Patterson who is now the new 24/7 champion which I believe is coming full circle from his days where he won the Hardcore Title.

 

The Viking Raiders vs. Ryder & Hawkins

Next is a great tag team match up with Christian on commentary with the regular crew. This one was a decisive victory for the Viking Experier… errr… the War Raider…. dang it… The Viking Raiders, and the won with the Identity Crisi…. umm Viking Experience… Yeah, that is the move.

 

DAMN!

There was a quick backstage segment with Canelis and his baby momma drama that piqued the interest of Eric Bischoff who made his first appearance and reference to his taking over SmackDown moving forward. The awkward situation between the Canelises leads us to a loud and emphatic DAMN from the one and only Farooq which was let out through the loudspeaker of the Mouth of the south himself.

 

The OC & 24/7

The orignal Bullet Club minus one appeared and showed off their new merch which labels them the “original club”. I want all of this that I can get and I truly hope the reason that Balor lost the IC title was to be swapped over to Raw and join the club with a heel turn. This could be the biggest thing going in wrestling and easily the biggest thing in WWE if they would just run with it fully instead of dabbling with it here or there.

Oh yeah, and then Jerry Brisco won the 24/7 title from Pat Patterson and was quickly pinned by Kelly Kelly for the belt, letting us know that it is in fact a belt that can be won by anyone regardless of gender.

 

Somoa Joe & Roman Reigns

Somoa Joe came out to mock the fans for their need of nostalgia acts and went on the make fun of Rikishi and The Usos calling them embarrassing. This leads to the other Uso, Roman Reigns to come out and defend his families honor. Roman gets the better of Joe in the exchange and then sets up a match after the commercial. This feels like more of the writers trying to tip toe around Vince’s strange new rule. I am not sure if it is some kind of agreement that he made with Fox that he wanted to get started with to condition the fans, or really just what the logic is at all. Most of the times though it has just felt forced and weird. this is no more clear than when there is a 2 out of 3 falls match every night or even multiple times a night lately.

This was an intense match with a fairly good quick build up, though there was really no storyline reason for it to happen. Roman won with the spear, and that will take us straight into Miz TV. There is definitely a theme of one off matches with no implications on storyline at all tonight so far. It seems that they always either throw together matches last minute without much rhyme or reason, or they run rivalries into the ground to the point that there is really nothing happening but the same matches over and over. I really would love to see more feuds with length and depth that keep getting better as they go. Kevin Owens and Shane McMahon (The first time with the Hell in a Cell Finale) did this in a big way and I just don’t think there are enough that end up feeling that way lately.

 

Miz TV with Seth Rollins

The former Universal Champion, who is already going to be going back into a match for the title, Seth Rollins is on Miz TV tonight. I don’t have anything against Rollins, but this is just another stale feud that doesn’t feel like it has any depth to it. I also don’t see how they are going to come out of it without making either Rollins or Lesnar looking bad in the wake of it. They could have easily moved on and left Rollins  looking not so bad because he could not avoid the cash in.

Rollins was cut off after making fun of Lesnar and calling him a Seth Rollins wannabee by Paul Heyman. He then chased Heyman back off and assured he would win at Summer Slam and will win against AJ Styles tonight. This is ironically who I believe should be in the title match and the next Universal Champion. I mentioned earlier that I had stopped watching wrestling for years. Well, what brought me back to it? I heard that not only was AJ Styles in the WWE, but he was the freaking champion. He is who he is and he has been a very big deal to wrestling fans for a long time now. He deserves the top spot and he has earned that top spot. It is good that he has the US strap but here is to the Phenomenal One getting back to where he belongs with a quickness!

 

24/7 Again!

Kellly Kelly was showing off her new shiny belt and was then taken out by… someone. She was then tapped out by…. someone else. Not sure who these two ladies were but they sure looked familiar. Maybe some commentary would be helpful to remind us of who all of these legends are? I’m not sure but there are so many of them it is hard to keep up.

 

Sami Zayn vs. Rey Mysterio

This is another manufactured match that was put together tonight. Sami was talking crap about the Reunion night and had a pretty good line about it being like watching the Attitude area through Face App. Rey felt the need to come and get involved and then here we are.

This match was going pretty well and then Sami decided to try and run away. He was met by the Legends that he was talking smack about who block his way. Rob Van Dam, SGT Slaughter, The Hurricane, & Kurt Angle. This leads to a 619 and a little shout out to RVD with a Frog Splash that looks more like one from D’Lo Brown than a Five Star. This was a great way to tie in a bunch of legends into a match and I felt like it worked out really well in the end.

 

Alundra Blayze 24/7

So apparently one of the ladies I could not recognize was Alundra Blayze and she came out to recreate her famous scene of throwing the WWF belt away on Nitro. She was however interrupted by the Million Dollar Man who bought the title off of her for a fat stack of hundreds. Everybody has their price!

 

Aj Styles vs. Seth Rollins

Jerry “The King” Lawler came out to join the team on commentary and this has all the makings of what could be an amazing match, even if it has none of the build up that it should. I have got to give it to Jerry for his one liner about Jerry Brisco and Pat Patterson asking for seconds at the Last Supper, classic King. The club was about to pay dividends until DX came up to have Rollins back. The message in my opinion couldn’t be any more clear. These are our guys, those are your guys. Vince can not stand pushing anything that he didn’t make, if he didn’t make it it has no place for an extended period at the top of his company. See NWO, Booker T, Broken Hardys, etc. etc. The fact that The Bullet Club has all the potential to take over his company after making it on their own and coming to the WWE with their names already set in stone with wrestling fans drives him crazy and that is why I fear we will never see him give them the full long push that they deserve and that they undoubtedly have the potential to live up to.

Well I ran into something confusing as they came back from commercial, it appeared that they were wrestling through it? have they given up on this rule already after making such a big fuss about it? After taking a closer look they restarted the match and you can see the ref motioning to get back to it, I have already aired my grievances with this and it just leads to too much cheesy stuff.

The club ran in and broke up the match. After getting knocked out of the ring they are greeted by Road Dogg, X Pac, Scott Hall, and Kevin Nash who for some reason came out to the New Age Outlaws splash on the screen with no Billy Gunn although Road Dogg did make mention of him. This not only did more of the we are the Kliq and you guys are not stuff, but they went so far as to have Michael Cole say, “The real Kliq, The real 2sweet”. Shoot me now, treating the originators of the hottest group in wrestling like a red headed stepchild when you could be pushing them along with your own company, just garbage. They should have all just went to AEW and given them a true run for their money by uniting with the rest of the crew that they started.

 

Mick Foley and The Fiend

Foley acted as if he was going to share some memories from his career when he was met with the familiar power outage and Bray Wyatt appearing as The Fiend. Foley was then put in his own Mandible Claw as the lights flickered and the segment ended with The Fiend’s disturbing gaze.

Bray has created a ton of potential with the Firefly Fun House that they can really run with as long as it is handled properly. I can’t say that I am overly optimistic that this is what will happen, but I really hope with the lack of truly great stories that WWE has going that they can take this and do something great with it.

 

A Moment of Bliss

Nikki Cross and Alexa Bliss begin to interview Becky Lynch and are interrupted by Natalya. First off this whole Nikki Cross and Alexa Bliss relationship is so freaking weird. I am a huge Bliss fan, and I understand that she does well with the whole manipulating people angle, but these two are an incredibly odd couple and Nikki acting one way backstage and then still coming out to be her crazy self while entering and fighting just feels very strange.

Becky had a great line about her belt being the scalp of the baddest woman on the planet and went on to say she would embarrass Natty in front of her home country. This devolves into a fist fight between the two.

 

24/7 Title

So I missed earlier when Maverick got the belt from the Million Dollar Man, well now he lost it back to R-Truth, who…made off with the belt and his wife??? Yep I think I saw that, right. This has got to be a record for title changes.

 

Braun Strowman Squash Match

Strowman came out to face a jobber and tells him over the match not to blink because it wont last long. He demolishes him in a minute or something after throwing him all around the ring. At this point in Strowman’s career he should be facing legitimate competition and should have already had the Universal or WWE title at least once by now. The fact that he hasn’t and that he is still being put in squash matches after the amazing Last Man Standing match with Lashley is just a shame.

 

A Toast to RAW

The Nature Boy came out Stylin’ & Profilin’ and was then joined by all of the legends from back stage. Hulk Hogan’s music played after everyone else had filed out and two of the greatest stood side by side out in front of the pack of legends. Hulk then delivered a short speech which felt like it was about to end the show on a kind of blah note. What to do at that point? Cue the breaking glass, Stone Cold enters, what would a toast be without a few Steveweisers. Stone Cold had an amazing heart felt speech and put a nice bow on it. Two people that were noticably missing were The Rock and Edge, but regardless of that it was a very full show with some of the greatest to ever do it. Summer Slam is just around the corner and hopefully now that this is out of the way they can start making some of these stories deep and interesting. Hope I was able to add some insight and thanks for reading everybody!