 The Rhodes family confronts the McMahons. By Graham "GSM" Matthews
Raw General Manager Brad Maddox Interrupted CM Punk Having Punk open the show was a nice change of pace, especially since his current feud with Paul Heyman is the best thing going in WWE right now. He effectively built towards his match with Ryback at WWE Battleground and showed great intensity on the mic. Maddox interrupting Punk felt random, and his subsequent match with Big E Langston was even more strange. That was rather telling from the sound of crickets as Langston made his entrance. CM Punk def. Big E Langston As previously stated, Langston has very little heat at the moment, so it was hard to take him seriously as Punk's opponent. Langston scored a substantial amount of offense over Punk and The Voice of the Voiceless sold well for him, but the ending outcome was never in doubt for this viewer. To my knowledge, Langston hasn't appeared on Raw since prior to SummerSlam, so it will take time before he can finally live up to his potential. The match itself didn't serve much of a purpose, but it was nice to see Punk in action on Raw for the first time in weeks.
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 Triple H scolds The Miz. By Graham "GSM" Matthews
The Miz Interrupted Triple H It was good to see HHH back to his heelish ways instead of shamelessly pandering to the audience like he has been in recent weeks. Miz and HHH were good on the mic here and both individuals played their respective roles well. Similar to Monday's Raw, this segment was successful in establishing Miz's serious side while also hyping his match with Randy Orton for later in the night. World Heavyweight Champion Alberto Del Rio def. R-Truth (Non-title) To my knowledge, this is the third time these two have clashed in singles competition over the last month, so why was the point in having this match yet again? Truth is far from relevant, and Del Rio needs victories over credible faces. However, it's hard to complain about Del Rio winning cleanly, which is far and few between for most heel nowadays. The post-match attack from Rob Van Dam was rather basis and built towards the World Heavyweight Championship match at WWE Battleground. By the way, a Battleground Hardcore Rules match? Really?  By Graham "GSM" Matthews
TNA World Heavyweight Champion Bully Ray Addressed the Aces and Eights Lather, rinse, repeat. Seriously, I have lost track of how many times we seen segments similar to this one in recent months. While Ray is a great promo cutter, these segments are never anymore interesting. It is good to see that an end to Aces and Eights is in sight, but it is hard to care when the only members remaining are Garrett Bischoff, Wes Brisco and Knux (what kind of name is Knux anyway?). Needless to say, this wasn't the most exciting opening to the show. Knockouts Champion ODB, Eric Young and Joesph Park def. Gail Kim and Bro-mans This was your basic comedic relief that was much more tolerable than last week. Thankfully, the match was kept short and sweet and wasn't a colossal waste of time. Will Park ever be revealed to be Abyss, or is TNA simply treading water with the angle at this point? I don't wish to see Kim contend for the Knockouts title yet again at Bound For Glory, but perhaps the debuting Lei'd Tapa will target ODB upon her arrival.  By Graham "GSM" Matthews
The Ascension Won a Tag Team Turmoil Match to Become the No. 1 Contenders to the NXT Tag Team Championships Enzo Amore and Colin Cassady are crazy over as a tag team, so it was nice to see them get as far as they did before being ultimately eliminated. The makeshift pairing of CJ Parker and Tyler Breeze was short lived, but it helped further the feud between the two. The match pitting Amore and Cassady against Scott Dawson and Alexander Rusev was good and a vast improvement over their last encounter. Amore scoring the roll-up win helped protect Dawson and Rusev and the post-match attack on Amore gave them an out for losing against The Ascension. The Ascension's act may have fizzled out a bit over the last year, but they are still one of my favorite teams in NXT right now and deserve to be tag team champs. Sasha Banks def. Bayley This was your typical Divas match by NXT standards, as there wasn't anything necessarily wrong with it but it could have been longer. Bayler is a solid in-ring worker and her gimmick of being clumsy and ditsy appears to be getting over with the Full Sail University crowd. This helped established the alliance of Banks and Summer Rae while also building towards the inevitable tag team match of Rae and Ranks against Emma and Paige.  Big Show soundly defeats Damien Sandow. By Graham "GSM" Matthews
The Usos def. Big E Langston and Fandango So, was this a match a determine who gets the first spot as DLC in WWE 2K14? In all seriousness, this was a good match with entertaining action throughout. It isn't worth going out of your way to see, but it made for a fun opener. Fandango and Langston are an extremely odd pairing, but they worked well together here. That is not to say I want to see them teaming on a regular basis going forward, though. If anything, I would like to see Langston embark on a face turn where he is most comfortable. What was the point of giving Fandango two clean wins on Raw only to have him loss a random match on Main Event? Big Show def. Damien Sandow The ending outcome was predictable from the get-go, so I don't really understand what the point of this match was supposed to be. Yes, we get it, WWE: Big Show is a conflicted giant with a lot of emotional issues at the moment. Sandow, on the other hand, is Mr. Money in the Bank and shouldn't be losing meaningless matches. I didn't at all expect Sandow to go over here, but at least he scored some offense on Show before going down for the count. I would rant about Sandow losing yet another match when he shouldn't be, but I feel like I would come off as a broken record at this point. |
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