The WWE Raw Reaction for 09/23/19 by Kelly Dishnow
Welcome to The WWE Raw Reaction! I’m your host, Kelly Dishnow. Let’s take a look at the wacky happenings when Monday Night Raw rolled into San Francisco. Consider this another view on last night’s Raw to accompany the detailed review that John Canton does for us on TJRWrestling every week.
We opened up with a quick video package on the happenings last week between Seth Rollins and Bray Wyatt. The little promo-fest at the beginning and the main event match lead up. Dolph Ziggler created the DQ ending so the tag champs and The OC could five on one Rollins. Instead of having The Viking Raiders and Cedric Alexander come out for the face save, we were treated to an appearance from the hometown boy, Demon Kane. Kane’s appearance came two weeks too soon as his entrance just isn’t the same without the pyro. Anyway, Kane dispatches the heels in the ring to bring out The Fiend instead of his trademark ringpost explosion. A Mandible Claw later, Demon Kane is down and The Fiend terrorizes Rollins to end the show.
Now live, here comes Rollins to talk about last week’s activities. Good promo to put Wyatt over to lead into Braun Strowman’s appearance. Quick back and forth from them and we have our main event tonight. Good segment also foreshadowing a Fiend appearance.
Our opening match for the night finally gives The Viking Raiders something meaningful to do other than beat up jobbers, although, they took on Gallows and Anderson so that might not be that much of a step up. It was a really great match between these two teams that WWE really should do more with. AJ gets booted midmatch than gets jumped by Cedric on the ramp to chase him backstage.
Becky Lynch is up next to have a sit down with Michael Cole. Strong promo full of confidence that we would expect from The Man. Good sell for the Hell in a Cell match.
We finally get an EC3 appearance on Raw and it is because Maria’s baby daddy, Rusev, needed someone to squash. Rusev looks amazing and I really hope he can get a decent push and this baby daddy nonsense doesn’t taint him. Interesting that Lana was nowhere to be seen during the match, even generating a “We want Lana” chant. If this whole Maria thing doesn’t lead to a Snitsky appearance, I’m going to be terribly disappointed.
Quick hype promo from Rey Mysterio for the Fatal Five Way. He dedicated the match to his son, how thoughtful.
Up next, we are treated to an excellent match between Sasha Banks and Nikki Cross. Alexa Bliss forgot to sell the faked knee injury from last week. Nikki had another impressive showing this week. Banks picking up the win with a unique counter into the Banks Statement. Alexa rushes into the ring to get a Banks Statement for her troubles, setting up a match next week between the two.
Oh look, Brock Lesnar will be on Raw next week. Gotta sell the Smackdown move to Fox.
Street Profits are backstage to hype up the season premiere of Raw next week. Miz shows up to announce the birth of his daughter, at least they know who her father is, and that MizTV will have Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair on. I don’t think either of these two can really bump for The Fiend next week. Yes, I know, all they do is sit down then lay down, but I honestly don’t think either can still do that. Street Profits throw us to the replay of Brock Challenging Kofi Kingston for the WWE title next week.
I feel bad for Ember Moon as she is going to have to make Lacey Evans look good. Ember makes the match decent but, sadly, Lacey picks up the win after channeling her inner Big Show for the Woman’s Right and then falling while attempting the Sharpshooter for the tap out. Natalya is shown backstage telling Lacey to bring it if she wants a rematch. I’m not looking forward to that match.
Firefly Fun House is next and Bray has to mediate a fight between Ramblin’ Rabbit and Huskus the Pig over a Seth Rollins action figure. Bray eventually destroys the action figure to close out the segment with The Fiend doing some overlays. The segment was good in progressing the storyline along.
It’s 24/7 time with R-Truth running out and Carmella was close behind in her wrestling gear. The Job Squad runs out to surround the ring. Carmella gets on the mic and says she is tired of all of the running and wants it to stop. Truth feels bad for her and then she finally rolls him up to win the title, a couple of months too late. With the guys all looking around going what just happened, the female locker runs out to cut short Carmella’s celebration and the chase is one with the ladies now. Maybe we can shift gears now with some of the underutilized female talent chasing after the belt for a couple of weeks.
The King of the Ring finals rematch is next and Corbin debuts his new king look. The match was just as good as last week, only this time, the right person won, albeit by DQ. Gable bumped like crazy like last week and was the real star of the match. I suspect that lots of Corbin matches are going to end in DQ scepter shots.
Another introduction promo from AOP. Good slow reintroduction of the team, even resulting in random jobber abuse. Perhaps another different promo for Smackdown with the same end result.
The fatal five-way match was great. I wouldn’t have had Ricochet go out first, but the match was fun and teased a few possible match-ups in the future. Rey picking up the win assures he’ll be taking a Mandible Claw bump next week.
The Strowman/Rollins main event was pretty good. It helped build Strowman back up but it was pretty much a paint by numbers affair to get to The Fiend appearance. Props to Strowman for getting back up after taking the first Mandible Claw only to suffer a second one. I’m not sure why Rollins was curled up in the corner the entire time, though.
That’s the show, let’s look at the highs and lows for the evening.
The Highs:
The fatal five-way was the best match of the night with of fast paced action in it. I would like to see some more interactions from Rey with Nakumara and Ricochet.
The Nikki/Sasha match was really good too. Nikki has been doing very good in the spotlight lately.
The Lows:
It was not a very good suicide dive there at the end by Erik of the Viking Raiders. He sold it like they had collided but the replay showed how badly they whiffed.
That Sharpshooter from Lacey Evans was an absolute hot mess and looked even worse than the one from last week. Falling didn’t make matters any better and Ember looked awful having to tap out to that. I get that Lacey is blonde and has a good backstory that can be exploited, but at least Alexa has a small drop of talent that Lacey does not have.
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That’s all I’ve got for this week. Let me know what you think about the column in the comments below. My initial thoughts are to do this after Raw, Smackdown, and the PPVs.
On a personal note, I’m really excited for this opportunity. This would be my second go-around on TJR, as I briefly did the ROH on HDNet reviews way back in the day. This site has a great group of followers and I hope I can keep you all entertained.