So after a night to digest, my final thoughts are that this show will be a very difficult and interesting one to judge historically. Many of the matches, especially in the middle of the show, were awesome (I don’t say that lightly), but every one of them had an outcome that people would have rather seen (Zayn, Sasha, New Day, Shane, Styles, Ambrose). The first intervention of legends was awesome, and Rusev gets mad props for selling that stunner like cannon fire
I don’t at all think Rusev or Styles were “buried” as some will claim, though I do think that the ceiling for Styles was clearly delineated in this match. Vince will never allow a guy he had no hand in making hold his title, or even main event, so Styles will be upper mid card. End of story. Which is a shame, but he and Jericho are almost the same age, so it’s not like he’s squelching a 23 year old either. If people want to see bad part-timer appearances and burials, they need only look at the Rock and the Wyatts. The entire Rock’s appearance felt forced and the ridiculous entrance was entirely unnecessary. Then the Wyatts were buried deeper than a tick in a Mississippi leghound. Strowman went from a guy they were considering putting in a match with Taker to a guy that took a Rock (Bottom) Roll from a 40+ year old actor. Rowan had best be making ROH contacts, because his career in WWE is over beyond 3MB treatment. And Bray just sounds like a babbling idiot if he backs up absolutely nothing that he says. Cena’s return was wasted in the same useless segment. Even if they are setting up Wyatt/Cena, we’ve seen that before already, and we all know who wins those in the end.
Then there was the “Main Event”. Not to pile on HHH, because people love to do that, but if anyone else held that belt, Shane/Taker closed the show. And that really screwed them, because nothing was going to come close to topping the Shane match, and they basically gave the outcome away ahead of time because if Shane had won, then the HHH match, and Steph coming out as super slut goth queen porn tease whateveritwas, wouldn’t really matter, because the Authority was gone anyway. So they were left with a match no one wanted to see, that one guy wasn’t ready to work like it needed to be, and with an outcome that everyone already knew and pleased absolutely no one. And no heel turn.
Which leads me to this thought…Vince obviously trolled all the internet fans with the Shane stipulation and his speech about ratings sucking and new talent being needed, which is whatever…but Raw’s ratings have sucked for years, and do they really think people are going to tune in to more Stephanie screeching, HHH proselytizing, and Roman Reigns as champion? That’s their answer to increasing interest? They had best come up with something good tonight, because people will tune in tonight. But if it is more of the same after tonight, then watch the ratings drop an entire point, likely in less than a month. So Samoa Joe, the Bullet Club, Aries, Corbin gloating about his trophy and setting up a feud with someone not named Kane or Big Slow, Wyatt setting a guy on fire with his kerosene lamp, something…because otherwise they will lose viewers faster than the Browns lose free agents.
