Monday Night Raw has been the flagship show of WWE since 1993, and the dominant pro wrestling show ever since the end of wCw’s Monday Nitro over 15 years ago. Yet fast forward to 2016 and the past few weeks have felt like, nothing really.
Wrestling is in its most exciting period for years, with fresh, original talent such as Sami Zayn, Enzo & Cass, Finn Balor and Sasha Banks some of the most talked about wrestlers in the industry. Ever since the draft, it kind of felt as if Raw was given the top marketable stars (Rollins, Lesnar, Reigns, Jericho, New Day, Banks, Charlotte etc), and Smackdown were given the upper midcard talent in the hopes of elevating them to be big time players.
The problem is, Smackdown is by far the more entertaining of the two shows since the draft, and that’s largely down to guys like AJ Styles, The Miz, Dean Ambrose, Dolph Ziggler, the women’s division and in all honesty, the entire tag team division too.
Don’t get me wrong, Seth Rollins is amongst my favourite current superstars, and Chris Jericho that of all time, but they are two of the ONLY superstars I’m finding entertaining on the ‘red brand’ at the moment.
And this isn’t just since Kevin Owens (I won’t go into my dislike for the big overrated oaf here) ‘won’ the Universal Title, but perhaps a show headlined by him just isn’t as entertaining.
Here are what I think are the key factors in what’s going wrong at the moment.
Inconsistencies
I’ll kick this right off by using Roman Reigns as an example. In an attempt to get fans back on his side, he was paired in a feud with Rusev, and guess what? It was working! Fans were cheering his attacks on the ‘Bulgarian Brute’, they wanted to see him dethrone the United States Champion, but then bizarrely when their work to build Roman’s relationship up with the fans was making progress, they threw him back into the Universal Title mix. Fans were confused as the programme with Rusev hadn’t reached it’s conclusion, yet they didn’t see him as a worthy contender to be a champion either, so they were back to square one and Reigns suffered the boo’s once more.
Seth Rollins is inconsistent as a face or a heel, which is again, confusing a lot of fans who aren’t sure whether to boo or cheer him for acting pretty much the same as he always has done, but against more ‘bad guy’ opponents.
The way title matches are booked is odd too, with the common theme being ‘if you beat this guy then you get added to the title match’, which leaves fans unsure of what match they’re meant to be seeing. With the Women’s Title, I was under the assumption we were seeing Charlotte v Sasha Banks at Clash of Champions in a rematch, then it was Charlotte vs Bayley, now it’s a triple threat.
It’s difficult to get fully invested in such uncertain programmes when you’re unsure of what match you’re actually seeing.
General Managers
I like Mick Foley, he is a great on screen personality, but I feel he’s being overexposed at the moment. We see him at the start of the show, then we see him several times backstage, then usually once more in front of the live crowd before the show is over.
The novelty of seeing him soon wears off, and it gets to a point where you feel slightly bored by him, which shouldn’t be the way, because he’s a fantastic character and bring a different level of charisma to the screen.
A week ago on Raw when Foley warned Rollins not to interfere in the match, yet he did, the Raw GM came storming out and ordered Seth to the back like a father scorning his child for staying out too late. I think they should have let that boil over until next week, leaving fans wondering how Foley/Stephanie would react, rather than the confusing display we saw out there.
I personally don’t know whether Foley/Stephanie are supposed to be on the same page, or whether the angle they’re working is they’re clashing over booking choices, but it also doesn’t establish their working relationship clearly enough, in the sense that is Foley the match maker with Steph overwatching, or does McMahon call the shots with Foley acting as a mear puppet?
3 Hours
This has been an issue for several years now, an overkill of time for a weekly wrestling show. Now they could just about get away with it before the draft, but now they’re working with half the roster they were before, and are expected to still fill that 3 hours of material.
Triple H has said on numerous occasions that the hourly time slot is something he’d personally like to change, but unfortunately due to contractual agreements they’re unable to alter at the present time.
It’s not good television to see dragged out segments, overlong promos and stop-start matches for the sake of stretching out the time to fill the 3 hour slot. I think this is really hurting Raw, and with pro wrestling it’s always about quality, rather than quantity, which Monday Night Raw is providing a lot of the latter, yet not enough of the former.
Storylines
I am not a big fan of the Cesaro/Sheamus ‘best of 7′ series at all, and I can’t be alone in thinking “I really don’t care”. I like Cesaro, and Sheamus for the most part, but we’ve seen them battle so many times before another 7 bouts has hardly been gripping. It seems they’re just plucking out opponents for Chris Jericho at the moment, because they have him involved in various circles such as Owens’ Universal Title, he confronts Enzo & Cass regularly, as well as now being paired with Sami Zayn. Jericho is one of the most entertaining if not the most entertaining thing on Raw at the moment, so WWE are using him to elevate other talent, but giving the other talent nothing to work with. Poor Sami Zayn seems like a angry, jumped up Canadian in his feud with Jericho, where as me and the other fans want to see some real passion from Zayn and some heartfelt promos.
To refer back to the Women’s Title, Charlotte and Dana Brooke keep breaking up one week then the following go back to being partners as if the previous week didn’t happen. Whether it’s a case of Dana being SO much of a lapdog for Charlotte that she just accepts the abuse from her (in which case how can we ever get behind such a standstill character), or writers are simply doing this to eventually turn Dana face, which wouldn’t work at all.
Superstars
With all this young, exciting new talent on the Raw roster, why is it that Chris Jericho is STILL the most entertaining of them all? Yes he is the best in the world at what he does, but shouldn’t other people be doing that to? Arguably the only person that can compete with him on the microphone is the incredible charismatic Enzo Amore, yet him and Big Cass seem to find themselves in meaningless matches all the time. Are we really supposed to believe that they would lose to The Shining Stars, possibly the worst re-packaged debut of the century, two straight weeks? That hurts their credibility.
The New Day’s shtick is getting old and tiresome, dropping the titles is a MUST, and Anderson & Gallows are exactly the ones needed to take them.
Owens is trying his recycled from other superstars act each week, but it’s very much a ‘seen it all before’ deal, when he’s paired with Jericho his lack of entertainment value is exposed.
Rollins & Reigns bring something different to the table than before, however, I’m not quite sure Rollins as a face is working as of yet, and whether they risk reducing his charisma and character in doing so.
We need to see more of Sami Zayn, more of Cesaro, more of Neville, more of Sasha Banks and these superstars need to be made a huge deal out of, and be given feuds and storylines that’ll grip us and leave us hanging on.
I know Kevin Owens won’t be dropping the title any time soon, and in the ring yes he’s very talented, but they really need to make him at least slightly original, because when he talks all I hear is someone doing a bad job of trying to be 2005 Chris Jericho.
The introduction of the Cruiserweight Classic superstars this past Monday on Raw was so underwhelming, the crowd weren’t into it at all. The reason for that is because the majority of them didn’t know who they were (with the exception of maybe Brian Kendrick), and they just saw 4 guys being placed on the show and having a match.
They should have had some of them appear on the show before in the weeks leading up, even if they were beating unknown superstars, it still gets people invested in these characters.
Hopefully this all turns around and Raw manages to find the perfect balance between quality and quantity, but until then there is plenty for them to adjust and make it enjoyable once more.
When even a cage match in the main event isn’t enough to grip the fans then that’s a huge warning sign you aren’t delivering the best product with the incredibly talent roster at your disposal.
They need to take a leaf out of Bob Backlund’s Darren Young book, and try and make Raw great again.
What do you think Raw needs to improve its programme?
Is Kevin Owens the right person to be the face of Monday Night Raw?
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