WWE Raw results, recap, reactions (Aug. 24, 2015): STINGER

WWE returned to the USA network for Monday Night Raw last night (Aug. 24, 2015) from Brooklyn, New York with all the fallout from the SummerSlam pay-per-view (PPV) that went down this past Sunday night in the same venue. That included a show that delivered in nearly every way outside of one horrific segment.

Click here to get full results with the live blog. Let's get to reacting to all the night's events.

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On and on and on and on (the face paint runs)

While Triple H and Stephanie McMahon were singing happy birthday to Vince, and Seth Rollins was going on and on forever about absolutely nothing, a certain someone was waiting in a box, sweating his face paint off.

A man called Sting.

This is perfect.

I don't want to hear about his age (although that's valid), or the fact that he lost to Triple H at WrestleMania 31 (that's valid too), or that this takes away from a young star getting a shot at a major pay-per-view (noticing a valid theme here). I don't want to hear all that because there is one man on the WWE roster who will always tug on my mark heart strings so hard I simply cannot pay any mind to logic and reasoning.

A man called Sting.

It actually works for the story too. He is the vigilante, after all, the man who cannot stand for all the injustice of the WWE Universe. Every time Rollins cheated his way to victory, retaining his WWE world heavyweight championship at any and all cost, it brought Sting one step closer to coming back to take care of business himself.

Now he's here to do just that, in the main event of Night of Champions, and this fan couldn't be any happier about it.

Plus, that segment and the way it was laid out was great. Rollins had me so pissed off I could hardly see straight after all that yammering and it was so effective because I KNEW I was getting Sting and I just wanted him to get to it already. And it made it that much sweeter when he appeared and laid waste to the most annoying champion in the history of the company.

Keep on working me, WWE. I'm loving this.

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People get what they deserve

I'll be damned if WWE didn't tell one hell of a story with Jon Stewart over the past couple nights, huh?

The former Daily Show host struck a blow for The Authority when he chair-shotted John Cena at SummerSlam, providing a major assist to Seth Rollins and costing Cena both his US championship and the WWE world heavyweight title. We worried they wouldn't bother giving us much of an explanation but, for once, we underestimated WWE.

They gave us the best explanation possible.

Stewart, you see, is a smark fan like the rest of us. A Cena victory would have tied Ric Flair's record for world title reigns at 16 and Stewart, like so many other smark fans, just couldn't stand the thought of such a thing. But, unlike those smark fans, he was uniquely positioned to actually do something about it.

So he did.

Then, "The Nature Boy" himself showed up and Stewart was a pig in shit, just happy as can be that one of his heroes was coming to congratulate him. Except Flair actually likes and respects John Cena and all he's accomplished throughout his career. Records are made to be broken and if anyone is going to do it, Flair would prefer it to be a hard worker like Cena.

Then, Cena makes his way out all full of fire and ready to snap Stewart's head off for making such a decision. He can see why he did it, at least, but it doesn't change the fact that he cheated Cena out of the WWE world heavyweight title. That's strong enough.

But they did us one better and had Cena play into the smark sensibilities by also rightfully pointing out that Stewart also cheated us out of the most consistently entertaining thing WWE has done all year: the US title open challenge.

Now, Seth Rollins, that wormy bastard, has all the titles and The Authority are making a ridiculously stupid looking statue while Cena is left to clean up the mess and Stewart is riding off into a cushy retirement with a bunch of signatures to sell on eBay.

So Cena sent him off with an AA instead. And you know what? He deserved it.

Come at me, smarks!

Really, though, this was fantastic all around. Superb storytelling with strong performances from all involved. Stewart even took one hell of a bump on the AA and I'll be damned if he didn't protect the business selling it all the way up until the moment he was out of the sight of fans and cameras.

Outstanding stuff.

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Divas Revolution is a mystery

It's actually impressive the new and interesting ways WWE is booking the Divas division to looks so painfully pathetic.

This time, they put Team PCB on Miz TV to say ridiculous things like Charlotte claiming the Four Horsemen were the greatest faction in the history of WWE, a promotion the Four Horsemen were never actually a part of. Then it got even worse when Team Bella came out to join the party to say their share of insanely stupid things, like Nikki Bella coming right out with the line "wins and losses don't matter" before putting over that she will be the longest reigning Divas champion in history in the next 15 days.

Never mind the fact that those two things completely cancel each other out.

Then, because this needed to get worse, the two teams started bickering back and forth and generally being annoying to a degree that anyone who put a stop to it would get over huge, especially in front of this crowd in Brooklyn. Naturally, that was The Miz, who worked his "when my hand goes up, your mouth goes shut" gimmick and got a HUGE pop for it. Credit to Miz, though, he turned it back on them by saying "that goes for you too".

Still, the script quite obviously played out in such a way that Miz would be the only likeable star on screen. The fans decided to chant for Sasha, who wasn't around for any of this.

Miz went further to get the heat and got in Team PCB's face to say they wrestle like a bunch of girls, which was a perfect set up for the entire squard to pummel him. It would have been oh so satisfying too, if Team Bella didn't then play right into the stereotype and attack Team PCB from behind leading to yet another trios match that no one wanted while The Miz just left, never to be seen or heard from again.

Then the match happened and it was a disaster.

The work wasn't the worst but it wasn't nearly good enough to get the crowd to care after how awful everything they did prior to it on Miz TV. This led to said fans going into business for themselves, doing the wave (which is dumb) and chanting "we are awesome" at various times (which is even more dumb) while completely ignorning everything in the ring. To make matters worse, the announcers called attention to it, further taking away from everything actually happening in the ring.

The end result? The Divas Revolution, if it didn't already, now looks like a complete joke. Sasha Banks had arguably the greatest women's match in the history of WWE just two nights ago and she wasn't even on this show. The crowd also chanted for her, which was the only acceptable chant of the night because at least that was within the context of both wrestling and the story playing out in the ring.

Later, Brie Bella, Nikki Bella, and Paige blamed the fans for helping get change and then pulling this disrespectful nonsense during the match. They aren't necessarily wrong, but it's absolutely misguided.

Either which way, the Divas Revolution already looks dead. It's sad.

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All the best to all the rest

Bolieve: That Paul Heyman promo was a Paul Heyman promo and I'm not sure I'll ever get tired of him cutting Paul Heyman promos but this entire Brock Lesnar segment felt like a make good to smark fans who didn't like the SummerSlam finish. I would absolutely book a segment exactly like this, with Bo Dallas trolling the beast and Brock being a nice guy and giving us an extra suplex or two and an F-5 before bailing off. This was fun.

New Day vs. Lucha Dragons: Xavier Woods had a trombone while Big E and Kofi Kingston were singing, so that tells you all you need to know about this match. They also put the Prime Time Players on commentary so Darren Young could tell us Kalisto and Sin Cara were "WOW'ing the crowd here on Raw!" We've reached a point where the tag team division doesn't tell stories, they just have various teams do entertaining things while also wrestling some matches. I'm good with it.

Dudley Boyz return: I don't know that we need the Dudley Boyz back in our WWE lives, but it was a lot of fun to have them back to work their old spots in front of an insanely hot Brooklyn crowd. Like, this was the definition of pro wrestling fun for the sake of pro wrestling fun. I was sports entertained. And hey, when they left 10 years ago they had no fresh match-ups and there was nothing left for them. Now? All they have are fresh match-ups. This could be a fun year-long nostalgia run.

Roman Reigns & Dean Ambrose vs. Bray Wyatt & Luke Harper: They're really good at sticking to the formula, remember, and they did that again here. Why? Because it's fun, and that's what this show was all about up to this point, at least. Reigns should always be positioned as the hot tag, even if he starts said hot tag with a Samoan Drop. And then a wild animal who looks a lot like Bray but bigger and stronger and holy hell who is that guy appeared. The Wyatt Family is back in full force with a seemingly better version of Erick Rowan. His name is Braun Stowman and he's a former Strongman. Let's see how this goes.

ATTACK: Stardust attacked King Barrett because reasons and Neville attacked Stardust because feuds. Pro wrestling!

8 Man Tag Team Action: We can actually credit WWE for this, in a way, because this was Divas Revolution style booking, right? Just a huge group of guys they needed to get on the show and had no better way to do it, so they just threw them all out there at once and had them do things. I did like the finish leading to Rusev and Kevin Owens chewing out Big Show for being a big stupid dumb idiot and then teaming up to give reality to the wildest dreams I never knew I was having. Then, because this is WWE, the four babyfaces saw Big Show hurting, humiliated, and alone after his team just turned on him and he helped them win the match and decided "hey, let's beat the shit out of him." Classic.

The Divas segment was absolutely awful in every way. That segment gets an F. I absolutely adored the rest of this show, so I won't let that segment drag down the overall grade here too much. Had they not been so bad, this would have been an A+ easy.

Grade: A

That's it from me, Cagesiders. Now it's your turn to sound off in the comments section below with all your thoughts on last night's show. How did you like it, if you liked it at all?