Everything about this was stupid

The build to a Braun Strowman/Shane McMahon match continued on Raw last night (Mar. 8).

It was billed as Strowman wanting an apology for McMahon leaving him out of Elimination Chamber’s WWE title match last month, and getting involved in his Tag title match with Adam Pearce. There was a sliver of hope WWE would weave an interesting story out of the fact Braun took down Shane’s Raw Underground monster Dabba-Kato, or maybe Pearce was working against Strowman for assaulting him last fall.

Nope... it turned out the Monster Among Men was really hot over the condescending remark Shane O’Mac made about his reading level the week before.

Nobody gets “some ha ha” at Braun’s expense.

Except “Dude Shane” really, really wanted to get “some ha ha”. And after someone in creative decided teasing out what Shane was going to say to Strowman was the actual money, they drew it out for a bit. Then we got one of the strangest segments I can remember watching in quite some time.

I get the idea. Shane’s a bullying jerk, and he’s supposed to be winding up to directly insulting Strowman by using big words to indirectly insult him. But it came off horribly (and that’s without even mentioning how we spent about 30% of the scene listening to McMahon aspirate, so much so that I’m legitimately worried about his ability to work a match).

Just to confirm how dumb and bad this was, I transcribed his filibuster. Not sure if it’s worse on the page or in the ears...

“Well Braun, I guess I should be talking to you right now. I guess I should say it, well, face-to-face. So Braun, I can see you been out here and you’ve been talking about the events that have transpired, that has caused me to do a little, well, self introspection if you will.

“And, hmm, what have I been doing? Did I have fun last week? Did I have fun last week? Well absolutely I did! I mean that’s what I do Braun, I have fun. You know, relax a little bit, it’s all in good fun here. But that’s what I do in life, I have fun. You should too. Do I have fun sometimes at others expenses? Yeah, I totally do. No problem, I have fun at other’s expense, but that’s okay. That’s okay in my book as long as it benefits me. And I’m not the only one who thinks like that. There’s many other people that do as well. I can tell that you’re not one of them. It’s okay Braun, just relax a bit.

“One thing I need to get done, is I need to come to an understanding with you. One thing Braun [walks up and down the ramp], one of the things I would never ever ever do is come out here and make you look stupid. No Braun. Never. I would never ever do that. Matter of fact, ‘stupid’ I find is an abhorrent word. Terrible word. I can tell by one of the things, you’re pacing around and you’re all upset about me, and quite frankly Braun, one of the things you have in there I can tell by your non-verbal cues that I guess you’re quite upset with me. I’m not playing games with you Braun. Again, Braun, I never ever want to make you feel stupid. I would never ever say those words to you. Those words are disgusting and cruel and abhorrent words. Abhorrent words. And again, never would I make you feel like that.

“So Braun, there are a few others that you may say, or may have heard specifically in your life, such as ‘Stupid is as stupid does.’ Or, ‘you fell out of the stupid tree and hit every branch on the way down.’ Or just quite simply, ‘this guy is so stupid!’ And that dovetails maybe into a little bit of a stereotype of maybe, you know, big man, little brain. You know, kind of like the dinosaurs. But Braun, here me out on one thing. Again, I have never, would I ever, specifically call you stupid. Would I, Buh-buh-buh-braun?”

In addition to being a painful way to spend five minutes on a Monday night, I have no idea how this does anything but confirm that Braun is really dim. The bit where McMahon fakes a dead mic to get away from Strowman so he can insult him? Okay, somebody might fall for that. But once Shane admits he likes to have fun at his expense, why stand there and take it for another three minutes? And if it’s the fear of getting fired thing he mentioned in his earlier promo, why does he charge after Shane at the end? “Buh-buh-buh-Braun” is the one insult he can’t stand?

Don’t worry. I’m sure something they did after Raw cleared this all up and helped it make sense in retrospect...

You can’t make this stuff up, scripted fight fans.

I don’t know whether Braun is really stupid. But I know I am for having paid attention to this.