Every year the RAW after Wrestlemania is a lively one to say the least. This is the time when smart fans from around the world who have paid lots of money to come to Wrestlemania, spend one more night in town for the first RAW of the new Wrestling calender year. So what were the biggest takeaways from the first RAW since the show of shows?
The crowd was raucous...and weird
The crowd was pretty rowdy as you'd expect but at times they were just downright strange. When Baron Corbin made his debut on RAW against Dolph Ziggler in a fairly good match, the crowd were more interested in a beach ball that had been let loose in the crowd. And people wonder why we don't get nice things. Another big one was the Women's Title coronation ceremony. Charlotte was trying to break kayfabe and state how this was such a momentous occassion for women in WWE. Did the crowd care? Nope. All they were interested in was chanting the name of a certain Doctor of Huganomics. Some of the interesting chants of the night were "Nakamura", "NXT" and "Gable" which actually leads me on to the next point.
Commentary was even more abysmal than usual.
We all know how bad Byron Saxton, Michael Cole and JBL are. They are just so bad. I cannot stress enough how bad they are, it's like they suck the life out of what is going on in the ring on purpose. Despite the fact that they are bad, as we have established, they reached a new low last night. When RAW came on the TV after the opening segment, this is what they had to say:
"Wrestlemania week continue on RAW which usually has this non traditional audience. This audience is made up of fans from round the world who exercise their freedom of expression. Sometimes they cheer the guys they usually boo and boo the guys they usually cheer."
Wow. Talk about not understanding your own bloody audience. Basically what they tried to say to everyone watching at home is that this crowd is not how WWE fans really feel about the stars in the ring. Erm, correct me if i'm wrong, but this crowd is usually the most on point crowd all year. What made it even worse was when they tried to cover up the chants in the crowd by lying to us. Midway through The Dudleyz vs The Usos, the crowd started chanting "Gable and Jordan" to the rhythm of No Limit by 2 unlimited. The commentary team tried to cover this up by saying that the crowd was actually saying "Get the tables". Really? how stupid do they think we are? Another hilarious highlight was how they tried to justify the deafening boo's for Roman Reigns by saying this was a "Special crowd". I hate all three of you. Please get off of my TV. Sure they are probably dealing with Vince screaming in their ear telling them what to say but there comes a point where they are pretty much just insulting our intelligence. Give me Mauro Ranallo and Corey Graves right now.
50-50 booking returns yet again
At Wrestlemania The Usos beat The Dudley Boyz and The League of Nations beat The New Day. A day after on RAW, The Dudley Boyz beat The Usos and The New Day beat The League of Nations. So those matches at Wrestlemania were absolutely pointless. For the product to evolve, people need to be given wining streaks. Sure, The Usos lost to the Dudleyz at Wrestlemania. Have them face someone else then. Having them beat the people who just defeated them at Wrestlemania just makes absolutely zero sense. Would someone tell Road Dogg that Wins and Losses do matter?
A fresh direction
Now that the bad stuff is out of the way lets get on to the good stuff and AJ STYLES IS NUMBER ONE CONTENDER! I guarantee nobody saw this coming, including myself and I happen to be a huge Styles fan. Even when he was in the main event fatal 4 way he looked like he was just there for the sake of things. A returning Cesaro, Chris Jericho or even Kevin Owens would've been a much safer bet for fans to bank on to leave as number one contender. But fair play to WWE they swerved us and gave us a number one contender that the majority of us like and gave us a feel good moment. It will be interesting to see what they do with Roman from here. Given a choice between Reigns and Styles there is only one way that the IWC is going to go. A Heel turn could actually be coming in the near future. The seeds were planted when he referred to himself as "The guy" in a smug tone and basically dismissed Styles and Zayn when they came out to confront Reigns. Maybe we could even see Bullet Club come out to make the assist for AJ, choosing to side with their most recent leader instead of the groups founder in Balor. (Prince Devitt) There is so much potential for this. Sure there's a chance that Vince comes out next week and revokes AJ's title shot but we should savour it while we can. It shows WWE see that there is money in AJ Styles.
Maybe Vince thinks more highly of NXT than we think
So we saw Apollo Crews, Baron Corbin, Enzo Amore and Colin Cassidy on an episode of RAW and we have The Vaudevillians debuting this Thursday on Smackdown? Interesting. Yes, we probably wanted Samoa Joe, Finn Balor and American Alpha instead of three out of four those options but we can't always get what we want, although I was legitimately surprised when neither Joe or Balor showed up on RAW. The problem now will be WWE trying to make sure that these guys don't fall down the card. I doubt that will happen to Enzo and Cass due to their solid in ring work and their awesome ability on the stick but the other three worry me slightly. Cena, Orton and Rollins are all yet to return and when they do it's likely that someone will become an afterthought. Given what Vince reportedly thinks of WWE's development brand, don't be surprised if it's one of these guys.
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