RAW Ramblings – June 27th 2016
Amalie Arena: Tampa, FL.
If you need any further proof that Vince McMahon has gone completely senile, look no further than how he handled the Roman Reigns situation on RAW this week. Vince actually thought that having Seth Rollins go out in the opening segment and bury Reigns for being suspended would actually cause the fans to have sympathy for Reigns and make everybody hate Rollins. Well, as you would expect, the complete opposite happened and Rollins was beloved for telling the whole world what an idiot Reigns was. They even put Reigns‘ apology Tweet on the screen for Rollins to pick apart word by word. It seriously might be time to take Old Yeller out back and put him out of his misery once and for all. Anyway, the point of all this was to tease the fans into thinking the Shield three-way at BattleGround would be changed. Rollins wanted a one-on-one title match against Ambrose, who came out and said Reigns should still be in the match. AJ Styles showed up and said he should take Reigns‘ spot in the three-way then John Cena arrived and said they should make it a five-way, because even Cena thought Reigns should still be in the title match. Stephanie McMahon came out and noted that Shane was again on vacation – I still have no idea why Shane or Steph would take time off when they are supposedly fighting over who gets to run RAW & SmackDown after the draft.
Steph booked Cena vs. Rollins & Styles vs. Ambrose with the stips that Cena & Styles would be added to the WWE title match at BattleGround if they won. Rollins pinned Cena in 16:00 with the Pedigree in a very good TV match; the Club & Styles showed up and AJ got on the apron to distract Cena to set up the finish. Later, Ambrose pinned Styles with the Dirty Deeds DDT in 15:35 after Styles was distracted by Cena coming out and fighting with the Club. Afterwards, the Club put Cena down with a brutal Magic Killer on the stage and Rollins laid out Ambrose with the Pedigree. Show ended with Rollins standing tall in the ring and the Club standing over Cena on the stage. – So, basically this show accomplished absolutely nothing other than not delivering on changing the three-way and having Cena & Styles cost each other victories. The matches were fine, although by the third hour the crowd was dead and didn’t care about the main event, however the booking of this show was mind-bendingly stupid. How anyone could actually think that having Rollins go out there and basically tell the truth about Reigns would be a productive thing to do is way beyond me. Imagine the heat Reigns is going to get now because of this; there is almost no way he can come back as a babyface, which means Vince is probably going to put the title back on him and carry on like nothing ever happened.
Sami Zayn & Kevin Owens were on Chris Jericho’s Highlight Reel. They basically rehashed their story from NXT, with Sami talking about Owens being jealous that he got to WWE first and Owens blaming everything on Zayn. Sami delivered easily his best main roster promo here and showed some great fire when recapping the story with Owens. Jericho sided with Owens and buried Sami for caring about the fans then he hyped their match at BattleGround. Jericho said their match would be huge, but noted it would not be as big as what he had planned for BattleGround, because he’s Chris Jericho. He did his goofy “gift of Jericho” deal and Owens & Zayn dropped him with a pair of Superkicks. Owens & Zayn had a stare-down and Cole hyped the BattleGround match… “if the power that be allow it,” because this is aparently Vince Russo-era WCW. – Segment was fine and everyone played their role well. They were kind of alluding to the Owens/Zayn match at BattleGround as the blow-off, as Sami noted they could end up on different brands.
Corporate Kane was back this week, I guess Mike Adamle wasn’t available. He wanted to run SmackDown; Stephanie told him no. Miz & Mayrse were back from the movie set and Miz & Kane buried each others’ movies. Steph booked Miz to defend his IC title against a “mystery opponent,” which of course turned out to be TheDemonKane. Finish was utterly horrendous, as Maryse got on the apron to save Miz from a Chokeslam and she collapsed in the phoniest way imaginable. Miz carried Maryse to the back and TheDemonKane won via count-out in 3:30. Later in the back, Maryse revealed she was “acting” and Miz gave her a big kiss. – This sucked and pretty much took the life out of the crowd for the rest of the show. Finn Balor Tweeted out earlier in the day that he was backstage at RAW, so it didn’t take long for the word to get around that he might be debuting. Unsurprisingly, a lot of people who were expecting Balor were more than disappointed with TheDemonKane. Worst of all, it looks like we now have a Miz/TheDemonKane IC title program.
New Day dressed up as the Wyatts for a parody skit. Big E was Bray, Kofi was Rowan and Xavier was Harper. The real Wyatts showed up on the stage and Bray talked about the power of positivity being a lie. Gimmick was that Big E & Kofi were going back and forth with Bray, but once again Xavier was put under some kind of spell and was hypnotized by Wyatt. Later in the back, Renee interviewed the New Day, but Xavier just stood there looking forlorn and he eventually walked away on his own. – Just what the Wyatt act needed, even more goofiness.
Everything Else: Sasha Banks & Paige beat Charlotte & Dana Brooke in 8:40 when Sasha tapped Brooke with the Banks Statement. Dana looked way out of her depth here and was completely exposed as being called up way too early. It doesn’t matter though because she’s blonde and has big muscles, #DivasRevolution. Titus O’Neil beat Rusev via count-out in 4:10; like a moron, Titus celebrated like he had in fact won the US title. Why are these men are still fighting over the US title when the champion demolished Titus in their first match? Enzo Amore & Big Cass squashed two amazing jobbers, Carlos & Mitch Walden in 0:35. It was fun while it lasted. The Social Outcasts showed up afterwards and said they were all “hard and looking for some action.” Enzo & Cass called them SAWFT and that was that. There was another Darren Young/Bob Backlund deal; it was pointless like all the others. Becky Lynch was booked against Summer Rae, however Becky & Natalya got into a brawl and the match thankfully never took place. Cesaro & Apollo Crews beat Sheamus & Alberto Del Rio in 6:02. Del Rio Superkicked Sheamus and walked out on him; Crews pinned Sheamus with his sit-out Powerbomb.
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