by jellydonut25 » Tue Jul 29, 2014 10:27 am
Going to a Raw is a fun experience to be involved with the crowd and into the cheering and stuff, especially when you're like me and throughout the night you cheer for the likes of Paul Heyman, Brock Lesnar, Bo Dallas, The Miz and Dolph Ziggler both despite them fighting each other, and Stephanie McMahon because holy crap, f*** the Bellas.
But sitting through a show is also a reminder of why when I'm at home, I absolutely don't ever watch the entire show from end to end nor do I ever watch live.
The show started off solid to great. John Cena's promo was by far the best he's done in a long LONG time. Rather than spew his usual GARBAGE about fighting for everyone in the WWE Universe whether they cheer or boo, he seemed to actually get mad at the people who would delight in his getting beat, chastize them for cheering on Lesnar, and showed some real emotion rather than just smile at the heel and laugh off Heyman's threats. This was great, and shows why people LOATHE John Cena sometimes...because when he's on his A-game, he really is awesome.
Then Cesaro vs. Cena was a great match. Cesaro was made to look strong, Cena did some stuff he normally doesn't do. Again, stuff like this, John Cena being GREAT for a night, just makes people hate him more when he's boring for a six-month stretch. But still, greatly entertaining beginning to the show.
Paige/AJ was a bit of a comedown from the awesome opening, but oh well. Just about anything would have been. Not the worst Divas segment ever (that comes later).
Triple H gave a solid promo, and while it was really WEIRD that Jericho would be the one to interrupt, it led to an interesting matchup that got us all excited to see a match that we knew would feel fresh and different and not like one we've seen before, so it gets a pass for that and the night is still clipping along great.
Then the six-man tag, though underwhelming in terms of action, had some good storytelling. The Nation of Re-Domination made their presence known still, and Miz/Ziggler have some great chemistry both in terms of personality and in-ring style. This IC feud is the best in a long while. I wouldn't mind seeing it continue for a while.
Then even though Bo Dallas's streak ended rather lamely, I think the segment did what it needed to. Too many people were cheering for Bo, and exposing him as a sore loser, and a definite heel was necessary to make all the kiddies and typical wrestling fans understand that he's sarcastic with all his promos.
Then we get a solid back-and-forth between the Real Americans and the Russian Federation and though it's not exactly advancing the storyline, it's all too fun not to dig it and get into it.
Again, at this point Raw is still going along very good. It's a great show. Tons of fun to be there.
Then Adam Rose shows up....UGH. This guy sucks. I'm fully OUT on the whole Rosebud experiment. He only shows up for a couple seconds at a time. It hopefully won't be too much longer before fans realize this whole thing is going about as far as Funkasaurus and just stop paying attention to this.
From there, we had an okay segment with Orton going nuts on Reigns, but it was WAY too long (like most of these beatdowns are...WWE has gotten to thinking that just being outside the ring for 10 minutes makes something brutal), more Fandango and Summer Rae and Layla than I ever want to see again (and I was REALLY disappointed with the crowd here for not starting some "Boring" chants), ANOTHER Divas segment (and a terrible one at that, with ANOTHER one yet to come), Jericho and Rollins worked a solid match that ended insanely predictably and without the crowd being much into it after the onslaught of the previous 40 minutes of boredom...
and then the show ended with a Bella. The Bellas are atrocious. Steph is selling this whole thing, and her being so good at what she does is the only reason the crowd thinks they care about the plight of Brie and Nikki. I'm not very in on this feud though, and by this point in the night I was just kinda tuckered out.
Dark Match to end the night was Big Show and Ambrose vs. Rollins and Wyatt. Solid little match that let the crowd go out on a high note.