Do you have the time to listen to me whine about nothing and everything all at once?
If you do, welcome to the Raw recap!
Man, did Kofi Kingston nail it or what?
Drew McIntyre came out once again to bitch incessantly, and Kofi hit the main point, but Lashley and Graves on commentary hit the others.
The New Day came out and interrupted McIntyre and Kingston said that he didn’t ask nor want help last week. He said he answered the open challenge because he never got his own rematch for the title since losing it. And because McIntyre gets rematch after rematch after rematch, we would all like him to step to the side and get behind Kofi Kingston.
Ain’t that the damn truth?
As much as I loved Drew last year, this year, he’s been quite a loser for the most part. Before Kofi, Bobby said it was pathetic that in order to help out he had to use MVP’s cane because he hasn’t been able to stop him. Then, during the Kingston vs. McIntyre match, Corey Graves said that McIntyre’s obsessed with becoming champion again.
Where’s the lie in any of that? It’s unfortunate, but every since losing the WWE title, Drew’s just been a big ball of meh. Now, being obsessed is not necessarily a bad thing, but the way WWE’s been doing it with Drew lately just hasn’t been clicking.
It was awesome to see Kingston kick out of the Mishinoku driver, and then McIntyre just had to bait Lashley down to the thing. It was clear what was going to happen. And of course, it did. Lashley got taken out by Kingston falling on McIntyre, and he and MVP interfered and caused the best word around WWE creative meetings – disqualification.
BUT WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?!?
Obviously a rematch next week, which will totally not end in a disqualification. Nope. No way.
Let’s get to the rest of the main hits and misses of this show. For a full rundown of Raw, check out the live blog by Claire Elizabeth!
Basket case
Everything that happened here made me feel vindicated for calling WWE’s women’s division the Reginald division.
Let’s tackle the first thing – this match.
I appreciated Tamina’s fire in this match for the most part. She was really bringing it to Nia and Shayna.
So of course, Natalya gets the winning pin. Fine.
How does she get the winning pin? My goodness. Here we go.
Shayna told Reginald to not be out at ring side for the match. She said that he would regret it because he would make the fire from last week nothing compared to what she’d do. So they showed him backstage for a few seconds. My immediate thought was that Alexa and Lilly stuff would draw Nia away from the match to save her boo.
That didn’t happen. Instead, Reginald just… walks out to the ring. And Shayna does nothing about it.
UNTIL HE CAUSED HER TO LOSE!
Well sorry Shayna but that shit was your fault! For like 30 to 35 seconds straight you’re staring at Reginald and telling him to gtfo. Turn the hell around and focus on the match!
And what happens when Reginald walks away? More fire. Those rascals named Alexa and Lilly. Always doing their magic.
So what’s Shayna’s response? Grab him by the shirt and make a match for next week between them, while Nia is standing in the distance seemingly looking conflicted? I don’t know. I don’t care.
I just want Nia and Shayna split. I want Reginald gone. I’m tired of this. He’s even overshadowing the stuff I don’t like so I don’t have as much vitriol for it this week. (Yes Alexa fans you can rejoice here. For this week.)
But what do I know? I guess you could just call me a melodramatic fool.
Beat the clock
Well this was certainly unexpected. A beat the clock challenge came out of Nikki Cross approaching Rhea Ripley and Charlotte Flair backstage. She challenged either of them, and Rhea accepted.
What then happened was something awesome, and something incredibly dumb.
Nikki Cross defeated the Raw women’s champion Rhea Ripley. Yeah. That’s awesome!
Rhea Ripley looked like an absolute moron in this match.
A couple of times during the first minute of this two minute beat the clock challenge, Ripley was casually shoving Cross down and laughing. “Watch the clock, Nikki!”
Uh… shouldn’t you be watching the clock? You’re the one that has to beat her! It was only around the 50 second mark when Cross got some momentum and Ripley got mad so she started to take it seriously.
Of course by that point, she then forgot that this was a beat the clock challenge and just pummeled Cross until the buzzer rang.
That was incredibly dumb. I mean I’m happy Nikki was on television! Hell of a way to get here there though, right?
So I guess next week we’ll see Nikki Cross in a title match?
I already beat her!
I’m going to make this short and sweet.
This match was really fun, but this match also wasn’t necessary.
It feels like this is the reverse of what Mick Foley did to Sheamus and Cesaro years ago. WWE is just going to throw them in matches now after being a winning tag team.
Naturally Flair got the win this week, because Asuka won last week. 50/50 fun!
Later, it was announced that Charlotte will be getting a one on one match against Rhea at Hell in a Cell. I smell Sonya Deville shenanigans there, because it’s strange how that just popped up all of a sudden.
The Rest
Riddle defeated Xavier Woods
Xavier Woods showed the absolute power he has in this match. They started by grappling, and then Riddle leapt onto Woods’ shoulders and he didn’t teeter much, which was crazy. Their double clothesline spot was cool, too. Then Woods almost got injured on a crazy looking German suplex and then RKBRO outta nowhere! That was exciting. It’s adding to this story, too. Is the Bro turning to the dark side?
Sheamus defeated Humberto Carrillo
This is a bout of repetition I didn’t mind because it didn’t end the way it should have two weeks ago. Though it did give us an excellent Ricochet television match last week. So it only made sense that after cheating like a cheater, Sheamus got rocked by both Humberto and Ricochet who made the save.
Honestly though I wouldn’t mind if WWE made Ricochet and Humberto a tag team after this.
Cedric Alexander defeated Shelton Benjamin
More 50/50 fun! Another fun match, but like with Charlotte and Asuka, this is The Bar in reverse. Cedric cut a good promo before the match, which Vince Corey buried immediately after. Weird as that came right after the worst promo of the night from Dana and Mandy.
Grade: C+
What were your thoughts, Cagesiders?