The WWE Raw Reaction for 3/28/22
Welcome to the Raw Reaction, where I offer my take on this week’s show in Pittsburgh, PA for the last Raw before WrestleMania.
As always, you can check out John’s full in-depth report here.
We kick things off with Promo Time with Brock Lesnar. Lesnar takes us down memory lane and will beat Roman to unify the titles at WrestleMania. It was a great promo and you can tell Country Brock is the best character he’s done. You can tell he’s having fun and where has this character been all these years?
The Miz is out and cuts a long-winded and dragged-out promo. He just went on and on like the Energizer Bunny. Logan Paul came out in Rey’s mask to try to draw heat. The Mysterios come out and Dominik starts fighting with Miz and gets tossed before the match starts. The match starts and goes to a commercial break? Back from break, the match is over. So, what was the point of having the match if it was going to be a dark match? After the match was over, the Mysterios beat up Miz while Paul looked on from the outside. Some partner he is.
They reminded us that Veer Mahaan is the surprise Night After WrestleMania call up. We’ll see about that.
Seth “Freakin” Rollins shows up “this morning” to a rather sunny WWE Headquarters to meet with Mr. McMahon. Rollins finally gets to go see him and McMahon said since he books WrestleMania, why didn’t Rollins just ask him for a match? McMahon gives Rollins a match against an opponent of his choosing *cough*Cody*cough* and Rollins does a super overboard celebration in the office. It was a really good segment.
Back in the ring, Omos wiped out Erik of the Viking Raiders with one move to win the handicap match by countout. I remember when these two were legit badasses in the ring. I’m surprised they don’t have a dancing gimmick yet. After the match, Bobby Lashley returned and eventually got Omos to do a bump. That’s a WrestleMania match for us. Yay?
24/7 Title nonsense continued backstage with Reggie proposing to Dana Brooke and Akira Tozawa doing the same to Tamina. I smell a title change at a poorly scripted double wedding ceremony. Maybe Undertaker can tombstone the priest just because.
Roman Reigns is up next for Promo Time with Paul Heyman and The Usos. Reigns talks about how he hasn’t beaten Lesnar at WrestleMania to finally give this story some meaning. It was a great promo and we were finally given a reason to care about why this match is happening.
Eight Women Tag Match is up next with the team of Sasha Banks, Naomi, Liv Morgan, and Rhea Ripley taking on Shayna Baszler, Natalya, and the WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions Queen Zelina and Carmella. Did my eyes and ears deceive me? Was that really Shayna Baszler cutting a solid promo before the match? Wow. Carmella still looks stupid with that terrible face mask on. The tag match was pretty solid but good lord was Corey Graves overbearing. He needs to be gagged whenever Carmella comes on. The faces win when the heels start fighting amongst themselves.
A video package of Stone Cold Steve Austin’s greatest hits played before Promo Time with Kevin Owens. Owens ran down Austin and it was a really good promo from Owens. I was surprised a little bit that there was no pretaped promo from Austin to finish the hype for his KO Show appearance.
Here comes Ricochet to job to Austin Theory in a ridiculously short match. Yes, I know that it is a crime that the Intercontinental Champion cannot be featured at WrestleMania, but why are we treating him like an afterthought again?
Promo Time with Bianca Belair is up next. Belair delivered yet another one of her confident promos about beating Becky Lynch at WrestleMania. Lynch tried to attack through the crowd but Belair was ready. Lynch took out Belair with a chair and then went for scissors to cut Belair’s braid. Official run down to yell stop from ringside. Belair recovers and dropped Lynch with two KODs before cutting Lynch’s hair. It was at this point the officials decided to jump into the ring to stop this from continuing. I’m surprised Lynch did the hair cut spot and it was probably just some extensions.
Drew McIntyre came out for his handicap match against Happy Corbin and Madcap Moss. Before that started, we grabbed a quick word from Becky Lynch backstage. She called Belair a bitch and McIntyre sold it in the ring. That was great. This handicap match went longer than the one earlier in the show. The result was still the same though. The guy with the disadvantage won. Corbin jumped McIntyre after the match to try to make people think he has a chance at Mania. Newsflash, he still doesn’t.
Edge and AJ Styles offered up dueling promos about what they were going to do in their WrestleMania match. Both promos were pretty solid. That should be the best match of the entire show. I can’t wait for it.
Shinsuke Nakamura and Rick Boogs made their way to the crowded commentary desk for our main event. Seriously, who thought a four man booth would be good tonight? Graves wound up getting pushed back into the corner behind Nakamura and Boogs. That was a rather funny visual. Anyway, our main event is RK-Bro taking on The Usos for pride. This was a really good match and I don’t think it is possible for The Usos to have a bad match with anybody. There was a lot of action from both teams. Since neither team could afford a clean loss, The Street Profits were sent out to cause the DQ instead of having Nakamura and Boogs do it since they were already at ringside. All four teams fought and RK-Bro ended up clearing the ring after two impressive RKOs to The Street Profits. It looked like we were timed wrong yet again, as the Street Profits were told to go back into the ring to eat two more RKOs. That gave us enough time to run down the card and have RK-Bro celebrate to close out the show.
Let’s take a look at tonight’s highs and lows.
The Highs
Raw was slow to get started this week but it got better as the night wore on. We had solid promos for the WrestleMania matches and the tag matches were pretty good. I couldn’t tell you the last time a WrestleMania Go Home Raw was this solid.
The Lows
The show needs to be timed better. What was the point of having Rey Mysterio and The Miz have a five-minute match with a three-minute commercial break in the middle of it? Did Miz babble on for too long and cause the poorly placed break? Also, at the end of the show, you could see The Street Profits get told to go back into the ring for another RKO apiece because there was extra time left in the show.
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That’s all I’ve got, until next time.