Monday Night Raw Recap: Pick Me, Pick Me

Welcome to Monday Night Raw, live from the Dunkin’ Donuts (mmhmm, donuts) Center in Providence, Rhode Island.  Tonight’s Raw Recap is brought to you by Astroglide.

Tonight’s Raw promises a number of things, including a Dean Ambrose – Seth Rollins WWE Championship bout and the announcement of who will be GM for each brand just 24 hours prior to tomorrow night’s Smackdown Live WWE Draft. We know Stephanie is running Raw and Shane has Smackdown, but who their right hand will be is still very much up in the air, though I’m logging a prediction now that it will be Triple H for Raw and Daniel Bryan for Smackdown, though the announcement that Brock Lesnar is keeping his options with UFC open may leave a window of opportunity to make more use of The Advocate, Mr. Paul Heyman, as a GM for either of the brands.  There will also surely be 900 mentions by the commentary team of how much a performance on Raw tonight can affect any competitor’s draft stock, so look for Dolph Ziggler to get steamrolled by somebody we really don’t care about.

So let’s get started, shall we.

 Are we going to start with the GM announcements?

Stephanie is on her way out to start the show to some Roman-esque boos.  I wish they’d give her a character of her own.  If she wasn’t just created to be some hybrid of a Diva Heel and Vince McMahon himself I think she’d have no problem getting over.  Think about it, how bad ass was that Triple H-Beyond Thunderdome Entrance she carried?  She’s awesome.

And here comes Shane O’ Mac, dancing around as usual in his bright white Jordans.

There we go, Stephanie launches in to one of her spoiled brat tirades.  But we did get a wonderful statement, “Lady balls are a hell of a lot bigger than testicles.”

Wow!  With the brand split, Raw is going to be the exclusive home to a new Cruiserweight Division based on the success of the CWC.  This is truly exciting.  Now give me ZSJ and it’ll all be fine.

And your General Manager of Raw: Mick Foley.  That was a surprise.  I think Triple H has really just committed himself to all of his pet projects.  That’s fantastic.  I would much rather him keep doing what he’s doing, because at the end of the day #WeAreNXT!

Foley at Mercury Rising on Wrestlemania weekend.  Yeah, I went with my own photo.

And as anticipated, your Smackdown Live General Manager:

So Shane McMahon and Daniel Bryan running Smackdown.  YES! YES! YES! Indeed.

You can watch the show if you need more detail, but I think you know exactly how this went.

I give you the gift of Jericho:

A tag matchup with Kevin Owens and Chris Jericho on one side and Sami Zayn and Cesaro on the other is already awesome.  The only downside, they didn’t give Jericho any time with a microphone.  That’s sad.  It’s okay, because the “Ole” chants have started, so you can rest assured the “Shut Up, Stupid Idiots” shouts are soon to follow.

Kevin Owens and Jericho make for such a great heel team.  I would very much be ok if they were to work together to take tag team gold in the very near future.

Not to get all political, but with the inevitability of President Trump, I could use some new national heroes when I move across the border.

Cesaro in on the hot tag is fantastic.  Climb aboard the uppercut train.  Cesaro and Jericho work well together, and they have to, because they inevitably have to get back to Zayn and Owens in the ring together leading in to Battleground.  That will be a good match, but I do hope that they end up on different shows, just to limit the amount of times they could make this match happen.

Sami Zayn with a roll up on Jericho for the win, because he didn’t need to pin Owens moving into Battleground to have the upper hand.

Because Miz is just always on commentary

Miz and Maryse are on commentary for a matchup between Darren Young and Alberto Del Rio.  Remember earlier when I predicted Dolph Ziggler would be the one that has to get steamrolled by someone we really don’t care about….I was mistaken.  I have to watch Alberto Del Pec Flex take a loss to Darren Young to make these ridiculous “Make Darren Young Great Again” promos and the random appearance of Bob Backlund back on the program have any point whatsoever.  I may not be the biggest fan of Del Rio’s character, but I am a fan of what the man can do in the ring when he is inclined.  It’s sort of like Randy Orton.  He can turn it on when he really wants to.

You know what else is terrible, a Miz against Darren Young match is going to render the IC Title match a preshow fight.  That’s what they’ve done to the IC Title.

Miz with a distraction and Darren Young gets a rollup win.

WHY WAS THIS NOT ADVERTISED?????

Are you kidding me right now?  How is this a thing that is going to exist and I haven’t seen ads on USA for it all week long?  Also, they’re going to burn through 35 minutes of the broadcast just for entrances and promos, and I’m going to eat up every damn minute of it.

So the first 3/4 of this was all fun and games, and then someone on the commentary team had to say “the mood here is about to get an extreme makeover.”  While they didn’t finish it with “:Arena Edition” that’s what went through my head and ruined the whole vibe.

After a commercial break (And I still haven’t seen Todd Chrisley, so you haven’t seen Todd Chrisley) it basically went down to a one on one display of individuals, but descended into chaos for a moment to get Big Cass and Braun Strowman in the ring at the same time.  Cass got the big boot in on him, but Kofi tagged himself in and went for a top rope cross body, only to get a massive slam that may have actually severed his spine.

Another commercial break, John Cena and Bray are in the ring.  Cena went for a 5 Knuckle Shuffle but bounced off the ropes to Bray Wyatt in that crab walk stance.  Little eerie.  This has essentially turned into a 6 on 1 match, with everyone on Team Bad getting their licks in on John Cena.

AJ gets in Wyatt’s face, so you can essentially count on another 3-on-3 at Summerslam.  That’s what they seem to feel is in the best interest of the AJ Styles/Club characters.  One of the best pure wrestlers on the roster and he seems confined to this role for a while.

The Wyatts and The New Day battled their way out of the match, somewhere off into the backstage area.  AJ Styles ducked a clothesline from Enzo, who caught Cena with it.  Enzo takes another wicked Styles Clash and Team Bad Guys pick up the win.

What in the hell is this weird 30 for 30 thing?

Seth Rollins is walking around an empty arena to talk about how his Shield brothers were just pawns in the game of WWE Life.  I don’t really know what else to say.  It’s like he’s doing a one man show for a one man audience in himself.

Baron Corbin got himself a pre draft squash

Corbin stomped Sin Cara with almost no effort.  Kalisto came out to make a save and he got dropped too.  

Women’s Wrestling Tag Team Match

Tonight it will be Sasha Banks and Becky Lynch taking on Charlotte and her “Protege” (yes, they felt the need to call her protege another 400 times), Sunday it will be the same match but with a “Partner to be named” on team Sasha as Becky will get a singles match against Natalya.

Today on Facebook, Sasha Banks confessed that she had it covered.  I wonder who that could be?????

You almost expected the mystery partner to run out and help as Natalya took out Becky leaving Sasha to get completely obliterated by Charlotte and her Minion (see JBL?  That’s how you use varying words to describe the same thing) but you can’t see Bayley until after one of the six NXT draft picks are made tomorrow night on the Smackdown Live Draft.

Oh wait, I got ahead of myself

Dolph Ziggler does have a match, standing opposite the ring from Rusev and Sheamus.  Now he does have the Long Island Broski in his corner, but still.  This is probably that moment where Ziggler has to get squashed, but we can hope.

Well, Rusev and Sheamus looked beastly in this one.  Zack Ryder took quite a beating himself, but Dolph Ziggler came in on a hot tag and got a few big hits in, including a massive Famasser, but ended up in the Accolade and tapped for the loss.

Welcome Back Viper

Randy Orton will make his return to WWE TV this Sunday night at Battleground as he takes the opportunity to take in the gift of Jericho during a Highlight Reel.

I remember a little over a year ago I went to my very first WWE Live event, WWE RAW at Philips Arena on July 13, 2015.  I was so excited when I got to see Randy Orton live.  I’m really excited to see him come back.

Let’s put the WWE Title on the line on RAW

“It doesn’t happen often, the WWE World Title is on the line tonight on Raw” – Michael Cole.

But why?  If you want to build these Superstars up as larger than life barbarians, then let them fight.  Why did we regain respect for John Cena?  The US Open Challenge is why.  He was a fighting champion that embraced everything that a title belt could stand for.  Well, that and America.

Steph-Foley and Shane-Bryan are out scouting the action in this match.  I don’t see a world where these two are on a different brand though.  Although they could very well just put one of these guys with Roman on a brand and let the other one be the marquee part of the second brand.  I sort of wish they had just done this all night.  They could have put couches on each side of the main stage area where they could have sat and scouted the entire show, not just these two guys, but Roman is still suspended through Thursday, so we can bank on that not being a surprise ending here.

Foley and Steph appear to be running the Seth Rollins fan club in this match up.  These guys are a great match.  I think Roman is going to be ok in this Triple Threat Match too, even if I don’t agree with letting a guy have a title match 3 days after he returns from a substance policy violation suspension.  They all seem to know each other really well, and if Roman brings what he had in those AJ Styles matches, it’ll be just fine.

Meanwhile, in this match, Rollins hits Ambrose with both a powerbomb into the security barricade on the outside then a hellacious frog splash.

.@WWERollins was THIS CLOSE to winning the @WWE Championship from @TheDeanAmbrose on #RAW! https://t.co/09FpEtpBSU

— WWE (@WWE) July 19, 2016

Rollins goes for the powerbomb into the corner only to have it reversed into a hurricanrana into the turnbuckles.

AMBROSE WITH DIRTY DEEDS OUT OF NOWHERE!!!!!  WHY DID THEY NOT PUT THAT ON TWITTER?????

Oh, we’re going with this same old thing again:

ONE-TWO-THREE! But who has won the match?! #RAW #WWEChampionship pic.twitter.com/qhetVQlQiy

— WWE (@WWE) July 19, 2016

Double pinfall, but by decree of Stephanie McMahon, your new champion is Seth Rollins???

That was fairly ridiculous.  But in any event:

I guess this will be a large portion of the two hour live Smackdown tomorrow, as they’ll have to address it before they can draft.

And the moment you’ve all been waiting for:

We’ll see you tomorrow as we go live for the Draft.  Until then, have a nice day.