WWE Raw: The Money in the Bank Go-Home
June 14, 2016 8:33 AM - Season 24, Episode 40 - Subscribe

The brand split approacheth, Brock Lesnar draws headlines for going back to UFC again, but before all that, we've got this month's PPV, top-loaded with talent and what the announcers insist on telling us over and over again are WrestleMania-level main events. After seeing virtually every mathematically possible combination of the six (Wait, six? Yeah, six.) competitors in the MitB match, it's finally time for what Michael Cole has been hyping as the greatest MitB card of all time, complete with a blatant teasing of a Shield triple-threat to close out the night,

Roman Reigns (c) vs. Seth Rollins for the World Heavyweight Championship: Seth's surprise return at Extreme Rules popped the crowd, and he's been in absolutely incandescent heel mode ever since as he seeks to regain the title he never lost. All indications are that the Reigns experiment isn't yet over.

The New Day (c) vs. The Club vs. Enzo and Big Cass vs. the Vaudevillains for the Tag Team Championship: The New Era's New Era-est match pits three teams who weren't on the main roster as of WrestleMania against a team that was a throwaway barely a year ago. An interesting combination of power and speed wrestlers should make this fairly fun.

Rusev (c) vs. Titus O'Neil for the United States Championship: Wait, Rusev is taking on an African-American for no apparent reason? Is this 2014? Rusev can do a good hoss match, Titus less so.

Dean Ambrose vs. Cesaro vs. Alberto Del Rio vs. Chris Jericho vs. Kevin Owens vs. Sami Zayn in a Money in the Bank ladder match: This one seems to be very up in the air, with the obvious outcomes probably being teased too hard to happen.

John Cena vs. A.J. Styles: Cena goaded Styles into signing a contract barring the Club from ringside, but they can't just give us a straight-up match between these two yet, right?

Charlotte and Dana Brooke vs. Natalya and Becky Lynch: The Divas Revolution hits full-on coasting mode.
posted by Etrigan (17 comments total)
 
I just can't believe how far the women's division has fallen. :(
posted by misskaz at 12:13 PM on June 14, 2016


I just can't believe how far the women's division has fallen.

"Fallen" is the right word, because "buried" would mean that someone was actively trying to kill the division, but no, they just... dropped it.

They need to promote someone to the main writing team and just give that person sole booking responsibility for the women. They don't need to cross over with men like some promotions do, so you just hand Sara Del Rey or whomever the book and say "Okay, you get two segments a week each on Raw and Smackdown, plus one on Main Event and Superstars. We'll talk about PPVs month-to-month, but plan for about 30 minutes to start, including video packages. Talk to Haitch about promoting from NXT."

Or just hire every woman who's currently on the Lucha Underground roster. Hell, even if you only take the ones that WWE hasn't already signed and foolishly discarded: Sexy Star teams up with Charlotte, who just relentlessly abuses and gaslights her until Sexy Star snaps and murders her in a 45-minute submission match. Kobra Moon plays head games on Becky Lynch for years. Cheerleader Melissa vs. Sasha Banks for any reason as long as they wrestle for 15 minutes a week over and over again.
posted by Etrigan at 1:12 PM on June 14, 2016


Did anyone else feel like we had two consecutive weeks of go-home RAWs? The number of video packages and random MITB competitor vs random MITB competitor last week nearly had me convinced I had lost a week and the PPV was that week.

That said, I've actually super enjoyed the random pairings of the MITB 6. Not only all quality guys, but the outcomes have been interestingly unpredictable to me.
posted by jermsplan at 12:26 PM on June 16, 2016


I was kind of suprised at how early they settled the MITB 6 and then just set them up against each other over and over again.
posted by Etrigan at 12:30 PM on June 16, 2016


Can I just say, uh, holy balls Xavier Woods.
posted by Etrigan at 6:17 AM on June 17, 2016


Jericho: "Why did you even bring coffee to the ring!?"
Ambrose: "It's the gift of Jericho, maaaaan"

both lines absolutely killed me.
posted by jermsplan at 9:01 AM on June 17, 2016


SPOILER ALERT:

So that's two straight MITB cash-ins that were explicitly called out in the text exactly as they came to pass. Literally the only indication we were ever given that this wouldn't happen was the Battleground promo that had Reigns facing off against Rollins in the center. So the question is, do we get Rollins-Ambrose for a while? Do we get FaceAmbrose-TweenerReigns-HeelRollins in varying combinations?
posted by Etrigan at 8:28 AM on June 20, 2016


It's weird, right? It's like WWE's writers are all former speech writers and are stuck in a mindset of "Tell them what you're going to do, do it, then tell them what you did." I am irked more and more often by how clearly they telegraph what's coming, and how frequently they (often Cole) spell out for me exactly what I just watched as if maybe I'd been out of the room and asked "oh shoot, what did I just miss?"

I thought the undercard for the PPV was underwhelming, but the AJ/Cena match, the MITB match and the Title Match(es) were all pretty terrific. I can't decide if moving the women's match to the middle of the card rather then the normal popcorn slot is a promotion or demotion, but I think the fact that the women's match at a PPV was a meaningless tag match (note: there are no women's tag teams) is all you need to know. I also don't know what it says that it never occurred to me that the IC Title was entirely absent until RAW, except that I guess the entire IC Title picture was in the MITB match. Well, minus the champ, but whatevs.
posted by jermsplan at 12:16 PM on June 21, 2016


Well, I can't blame WWE writers too much for that format of telegraphing and repeating themselves. So much of television does that with the recaps and "scenes from the next episode" before and after every commercial break; especially reality TV which is what I compare WWE to a lot.

In more shocking news: Roman Reigns suspended for 30 days for wellness policy violations. (!!!)
posted by misskaz at 1:10 PM on June 21, 2016


I'm shocked how much Roman has stayed on screen and in everyone's mouth during his suspension.

Brock wins a real fight, and is immediately booked in a completely meaningless match with Orton? Also, after his UFC win Brock has to absolutely destroy Orton, right? I feel bad for Randy. If I were him I would decide not to return.

Make Darren Young Great Again started off weird, has stayed weird, but now I totally love it.

Hard to know how long the WWE had that Wyatt/New Day outdoor fight in the works, but it sure looks like they waited exactly 0 days to try and steal some of the rub off of Final Deletion.

Steph getting RAW and Shane getting SmackDown! had an unbelievable amount of buildup over the last months, considering it's the most obvious solution and they could have just gone with that from the start.

I'm looking forward to the draft and the new SmackDown!. I remember in 2002 I was in college and we didn't get UPN in the dorms. I was basically on my dorm room floor crying when SD! took Kurt Angle (my favorite wrestler) and split up the Dudley Boys (my favorite team). Those were dark days.
posted by jermsplan at 7:51 AM on July 13, 2016


you know what's awesome? The first episode of the Cruiserweight Classic. I love basically everything about it.
posted by jermsplan at 2:40 PM on July 14, 2016 [1 favorite]


The rules for the draft have been posted. I for one expect rigid adherence to them.
posted by Etrigan at 3:54 PM on July 17, 2016


I have absolutely no problem stressing about these rules for the next 36 hours, since this draft is obviously very real and very important. Tag teams count as one pick unless the GM explicitly rejects part of the team? In what circumstance would a GM do that!? I'm glad to see that valets go with the superstar (and that Backlund is officially Young's valet). I'm also glad to see The Miz filed alphabetically under T.

No commentators, no Paul Heyman. None of the Wyatts are grouped together.
posted by jermsplan at 6:42 AM on July 18, 2016


In what circumstance would a GM do that!?

I'd say a compelling (kayfabe) case could be made for doing that to either Enzo or Cass. But I hope they don't.
posted by Etrigan at 6:45 AM on July 18, 2016


Also, if anyone wants to do a front-page Draft post and/or tonight's go-home Raw post, I'm a little busy at the moment with family vacationing.
posted by Etrigan at 7:08 AM on July 18, 2016


Just one note on the draft tonight: Cageside Seats' banner is "BREAKING NEWS: Eva Marie drafted to SmackDown". That is some Kevin Owens-level trolling there.
posted by Etrigan at 9:18 PM on July 19, 2016


new, slightly tardy FPP
posted by jermsplan at 12:52 PM on July 21, 2016


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