WWE hit Los Angeles, California for Monday Night Raw this week, and decided now was as good a time as any to finally put the women in the main event with a championship match that saw Sasha Banks defeat Charlotte. She cried after, of course, but they delivered how they needed to.
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Liberate
The best I can say about the Charlotte vs. Sasha Banks match was that WWE managed to give it the big fight feel you always want in main event match-ups like this. The crowd in LA was buzzing and the all the set up they did beforehand felt proper.
The promo putting over their history was top notch. The way they reinforced the friendship between Sasha and Bayley was aces. How they booked Dana Brooke to keep her away from the match itself made sense.
It was well done all around.
The match itself was no technical masterpiece, and you likely aren't going to see anywhere near the same praise for similar work they did in NXT, but they carried the emotion all throughout the match, hit a big spot or two, built to a big finish and paid it off with a title change.
You couldn't ask for much more out of a Raw main event. Just, you know, be prepared for them to oversell the hell out of this in the future.
Totally worth it.
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My madness
Everything they did with Kevin Owens and Chris Jericho during this show was everything they didn't do with Cesaro and Sheamus (and still aren't doing, by the way).
First, they continued to establish the friendship the two share via a shared disdain for literally everyone who isn't the two of them. But they also finally teased real dissent when Owens, who is actually selfish and doesn't really care all that much about the friendship, refused to go along with the idea of challenging for the tag team titles until he realized Jericho may ask for a Universal championship match.
The key here is Jericho's love for KO and their friendship has always felt legitimate, like he's speaking in earnest when defending it to second rate celebrities who are bad at commentary. But even their role was important, as was New Day working their comedy. Everyone can see the friendship is a farce but Jericho.
That's why he would ignore his want for the main title and instead focus on chasing the tag straps. Later, that match broke down because of Seth Rollins and JeriKO lost. That's fine, but Owens completely bailed on his "friend," leaving him to eat a Pedigree.
This beautifully sets up Jericho going babyface -- and he hardly needs to change what he's doing, considering fans are eating it up so much already -- while keeping us on track with Rollins, who already turned babyface and is in the process of tearing ass through everyone.
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All the best to all the rest
Hell in a Cell: Roman Reigns and Rusev beating each other up is fun! At one point Rusev kicked Reigns in the neck. That's just good stuff. I'm not sure I get why they had the babyface ask for the stipulation but we can count on a fun match.
Burn it down: Seth Rollins as the babyface who has been wronged and just won't stand for it is a fine story. They did well having Stephanie McMahon make clear he is now, for the very first time in his WWE career, completely on his own and he won't be able to hold up by himself. That gives us something to root for. He's got fire in his promos, and they gave him a great dig to get in on Stephanie that got over well. His ring work will take care of the rest. I don't know what they're implying with her intrigued stare after he told her off, but it's worth seeing where it goes.
HP critical: Brian Kendrick busting out a whole lot of veteran tricks in his match with TJ Perkins was well executed, like a wide receiver winning a battle with a cornerback using clear pass interference but doing it in such a way the referee won't flag it. Cheating? You bet, but the crafty vets get the job done how they need to, and they win. When it happens to your team, it's utterly maddening. That's what they got across here. This was good stuff.
RAWR: Braun Strowman is tired of chumps stepping up to get beat down and his chosen method of fixing it was to have Byron Saxton tell Mick Foley he might cancel all of next week if the General Manager doesn't give him some real competition. This man, as one of our lovely followers put it, threatened to destroy the concept of time. He's incredible.
Titus Brand: They introduced a new gimmick for Titus with the catchphrase "make it a win" and then had him lose clean to Sami Zayn in just a couple minutes. I don't get it either.
Rebuilding: They advertised Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson like killers of the tag team division who have been running roughshod over everyone, which is, of course, nonsense, but at least they're bothering to build them back up after jobbing them to New Day for so long. So that's good!
Tony Nese def. Rich Swann: They're still introducing cruiserweights, and it's fine.
Emmalina: We know literally nothing about this new character right now, so it's far too soon to make any judgments on anything. The name is dumb, sure, but the biggest money draw in the history of the company was a guy named "Steve." We can shorten it to Emma anyway, right? Maybe the new character is awful and bad and everything wrong in the world but it's too soon to say anything even close to that.
Cesaro and Sheamus: They're still yelling at each other, playing tattletale, and beating up nobodies. In other words, a total waste of time.
Final thought: Plenty of good stuff on this show. Not a bad offering at all.
Random Twitter grades for Raw here.
Your turn.