Bada Boom, Realest Raw Recap in the Room (May 2, 2016)

How you doin’?

Monday Night Raw for May 2nd, 2016 comes to us live from St. Louis, Missouri, a town full of people still butthurt about losing the Rams.  I mean, seriously, can you blame the Rams?  This is LA…

And this is apparently how Stan Kroenke sees St. Louis:

St. Louis is a baseball town.  St. Louis is probably a hockey town too.  St. Louis didn’t seem to care a whole hell of a lot about the Rams until they wanted greener….or sand covered….pastures.  It’s no different than the whole UAB debacle from a couple of years ago.  Nobody ever went to a UAB game, EVER!  The students didn’t even go to UAB games because the ones that weren’t up to their nuts in test tubes and lab equipment all day every day were at Alabama games…like the real Alabama, the one in Tuscaloosa with all the National Championships.  Don’t act all superior to the whole situation when you weren’t buying any tickets to help finance the franchise to begin with.  Roll Tide.

So I did what I don’t normally do and I read a lot of recaps and checked through my Twitter feed last night a lot, so I got the basic gist of it, so this morning I got up early and sort of glossed through Raw.  So let’s hit this thing quickly.

We’re going to go out of order, because some things are obviously more important than others, one thing we got to learn tonight for certain came from this man:

And he’s seven foot tall, and you can’t teach that.  We got what we desperately needed to hear, good news regarding Enzo in that it was a concussion but he’s not seriously injured and should, in all likelihood, not miss a lot of screen time and only be out of action slightly longer than that.  What you learned on Monday Night Raw on Monday, May 2nd: Big Cass doesn’t have to have Enzo on the mic for either of these guys to both to be stars.  While Enzo may be great on the mic, Cass held his own, and seeing the big man come in on the hot tag from New Day and just lay waste to all comers was exactly why I truly believe this guy can be a great talent in this company for a long time to come, as long as his health holds up because the bigger guys do tend to run into more issues with that.

Enzo & The New Day Defeated The Dudz & Vaudevillians

…….

We did finally get Emma and Becky Lynch.  These two are great in the ring, and I really think it was a terrible disservice to the feud to kind of hint at it and then ignore it for 3 weeks.  Whatever, it’ll be a hell of a match at Extreme Rules, hopefully for a #1 Contender spot.

……

A pretty solid back and forth between Charlotte and Nat, then Steph informed the Nature Boy he was banned from ringside for the submission match at Extreme Rules.

……

More will he, won’t he stuff from both AJ Styles and Roman.

For the AJ of it all:  Gallows and Anderson basically served up Roman and tried to hand AJ a chair to get in on the action, which he declined.  The Usos exist for no reason except to be annoying to me and stand in as filler during the Roman feuds.  They ran in with chairs and at this point AJ had no choice but to return fire.

For the Roman of it:  He got his ass beat, then when he was down, AJ was defending himself and his friends from the Usos, after having already declined the opportunity to further destroy Roman because he’s a good guy, and Roman of course gets to get up and drop AJ in the name of Family Uce.

What I see:  Stop trying to act like you’re going to turn either of these guys heel.  AJ is toeing the line between hero and villain on the tightrope that is this storyline, and he’s doing a great job at it, but at some point, you’ve got to make your decision and turn one of these guys.  Gallows and Anderson could play clear heel faction muscle, and they’re currently doing so.  If AJ finally starts to see that he’s going to get his ass handed to him every time he does the right thing, when does he stop doing the right thing?  If Roman is going to get relentlessly booed for existing and drawing breath inside the same arena as the WWE Universe, when will it consume him and turn him against everyone.  One Versus All is a much better sell for the ultimate bad guy than the superman because #LolRomanWinz.

BC Balor Club gets the win, but they didn’t leave without getting their asses kicked.

…….

We found out that the formula won’t change, and most shows are going to open, as far as I can tell, with lengthy McMahon Shenanigans Opening Segments for a while.  Now it’s Shane in the ring with Steph instead of HHH.  Don’t know how I feel about that.  I’m sure there is some inevitable build underway here for Shane to face Haitch at Summerslam.  Of note:  Opening segments that are glorified booking meetings are boring as shit.  Don’t make this habitual.

…….

A Battle Royal was fought to determine the Number One contender for the US Title, because now rather than organically build feuds towards eventual title matches we will just have matches to determine a number one contender, it’s much easier on the creative department.  Zack Ryder was shining bright through a great portion of this match, and Titus O’Neil even got to be a part of it, but Rusev inevitably won, which I’m ok with because he was great against Cena once and he’ll be great against Cena again when The Face takes back his belt and brings back the long missed US Open Challenge.  We also have to have come to the realization in this that the company is already giving up on Baron Corbin, right?  They seemingly have no direction for him and from what I’ve read they aren’t making a whole lot of effort to create one either.  This is saddening.

Rusev wins, is the new #1 US Championship contender.

…….

Handful of crap thrown in.

You got a Tyler Breeze and R-Truth vs Golddust and Fandango match, which is just weird.  They have completely wasted Tyler Breeze, it’s really sad because he’s a great performer and with the right push I think they could sell weird fuzzy leg things at the merch stand like Usos t-shirts because kids are weird.  And why is Fandango suddenly back on TV so much?  Team Breeze with the win but what difference will it ever make?

The Ambrose Asylum was cancelled by Steph, who reinstated the Highlight Reel.  Jericho was out, destroyed Ambrose’s potted plant.  This feud will be your new Orton-Sheamus, mark my words.

Owens and Cesaro had a match with Miz on Commentary, so you could have just expected something to ruin the greatness of that match up, which you got.  Miz jumped in before Cesaro could swing KO, Sami came in.  Everything broke down, no winner.  I’d imagine you’ll get some combination of these 4 for the next few weeks, lots of tag matches, and the inevitable fatal four way at Extreme Rules.  It won’t be a bad match at all, I just wish they didn’t feel the need to book everything in the exact same and be this predictable all the time.

……….

And without further adieu, your Episode 1 Review of Camp WWE.

I thought it was funny.  I couldn’t help but appreciate how willing both Ric Flair and Vince were to kind of poke fun at themselves and the roster, particularly Vince and his love of John Cena.  At one point I believe he admits he was a dickless loser of a child.  It was a lot of fun, and I hope it continues to be.  Plus little Steve Austin chugging energy drinks and setting things on fire at random will probably help fill any potential lulls the show finds.  I liked it, it was creative and it felt different, which is always greatly appreciated when so much of the rest of the company just feels like its on a loop.

Give it a watch, let me know what you think.