I want to start this week’s article by talking about Eric Bischoff. I know back at the end of June when the announcement was made to bring both he and Heyman in to run the two weekly shows there was excitement in the air. But unfortunately wrestling fans have some real short term memories. Bischoff is a guy who had one properly good idea (that he stole from an angle in Japan) and has built a career off of it. I’m not saying he never had any other good ideas, but calling him a good booker would be one hell of a stretch.
As he had been gone for a long time and people like to romanticise the Monday Night Wars, I understood the excitement when he was first announced. In the cold light of day though, I am honestly surprised he made it this long. Over the last few months Vince has been regularly ripping up the SmackDown script on a Tuesday morning. Any inside info that has came out relating to Eric is that if you ever need to find him, look in catering. It has also apparently been a running joke for months now that he can’t remember any of the wrestlers names.
So with Bischoff out Vince, instead looking to the future has went with the past in appointing Bruce Prichard. Now just because he has went to the past doesn’t mean it is a bad idea. To be honest it is one of those wait and see situations. Something that is concerning though is that Prichard has often been referred to as a Vince McMahon yes man for decades, so where Heyman is likely to try and stand his ground when met with some standard shitty Vince booking, the odds are higher that Bruce just rolls over and accepts it.
Next on the docket is Mike Bennett. The word leaked out on Monday night that he had asked for his release. This led to many fans on Twitter siding with Bennett and hoping WWE would let him leave for greener pastures. Now while I agree he would be better elsewhere, like I have stated many times in the past the angle they did with him over the last few months has effectively ended his career.
There is certain angles that leave a stink on you, and this is one of them. You also have to question the logic of a guy asking for his release after he signed a 5 year deal only a few months ago. He had wanted to leave less than a year ago and could have done so, but got talked into taking a big contract to stay. Now it’s totally understandable that this stupid angle has soured him on WWE but you have to ask yourself, what was he expecting?! I’m sure they gave him the promise of a push if he signed, but if he honestly believed it I have some magic beans he might be interested in.
Anywho, let’s get started on the good and the bad from Monday Night RAW.
It is honestly really tough to find positives in WWE’s main roster shows at the moment. I’m not saying everything was bad on the show. Becky and Charlotte had a decent match, but we have seen it what feels like about a thousand times. Also, is Charlotte heel again? Who even knows at this point.
Viking Raiders finally being prominently featured and winning the belts was also great, but you just have this dread about how little it is going to matter in the grand scheme of things since Vince has little to no interest in tag team wrestling. We can hope this time it will be different.
Where to begin. I guess we’ll start with the draft. An absolute waste of time! 90% of the roster was drafted to the same show as they were post WrestleMania, which makes sense since apparently Vince didn’t even plan to do another draft until he decided it might be a good idea to try and keep week two of ratings on Fox higher than normal.
I know this didn’t fully play out on RAW, but the absolute stupidest moment of the draft was the “Blockbuster Trade” that came on Tuesday during the new FS1 show. Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross, after being listed in the draft lineup as a team were drafted separately, TO THE SAME SHOW. As if that wasn’t stupid enough they were then “traded” (for no-one) to SmackDown AS A TEAM. So RAW spent two draft picks on them when they only needed to use one, then four days later just hands them over to SmackDown? Absolutely ridiculous.
That is just one thing about the draft that I chosen as well. One look at the war rooms showed you just how ridiculous the whole thing was. We were promised a sports like feel and instead we got a parody of sport. Not what fans were looking for to say the least. The whole thing reminded me of the Billionaire Ted skits that ran on RAW in the mid 90’s.
The chalkboard scrapping badness was laced throughout this show though. You see you may not have heard this, but Ricochet is a real life superhero. Isn’t that cool? It’s totally going to get him over. 💩
Then there was the Bray/Seth stuff. Seth Rollins is dead and buried as a babyface. It’s not even worth trying to salvage at this point. I remember earlier in the year he was named the #1 wrestler in the world by some magazine. If that didn’t look stupid enough at the time it certainly hasn’t aged well. Ever since he got in a Twitter beef with Will Ospreay his popularity has plummeted.
Once again on Monday night he was booed during a backstage promo and then booed heavier for his beat down of Wyatt. The segment where he destroyed the Firefly Fun House was laughably bad as well. They even added in comedic punching noises as Seth mounted Bray. The whole thing was embarrassing and unfortunately that statement could be made for a lot of what we are seeing on main roster WWE TV at the moment.
The show only doesn’t get a lower score because there was some decent wrestling on it.
Due to time constraints this week I won’t be covering AEW or NXT more in-depth. They were both once again great shows and I have no doubt once SmackDown is in the books the two Wednesday night shows will have been the best shows of the week, but when pressed I need to cover the shows that garner the most interest and at the moment (mostly because of how bad they are) RAW and SD are more talked about.
I will be back later in the week with SmackDown thoughts and they will be added to this existing article as always, so check back! In the meantime you can catch me on Twitter @VizualDze for up to the minute thoughts on wrestling and gaming. Peace!
