So we had the Royal Fucking Rumble, and despite the aches I still have from that seat in my neck and my back, I still had a terrific time. I knew that I wasn't going to be at Raw or SD, but I was still expecting some surprises coming into the post-Rumble episodes and hopefully, good episodes. But will we get them?
Raw kicked off with Men's Rumble winner Seth Rollins coming out to live out a childhood dream as he stood in the ring and pointed at the Mania sign. Then Triple H came out and got emotional with Seth for a bit but then went back to kayfabe and told Seth that, by the end of the night, he had to choose who he was going to be facing at Mania, whether it was Daniel Bryan or Brock Lesnar. But then to interrupt the proceedings came Dean Ambrose, who came out like he meant it. He spit some fire like the Ambrose of old as he demanded a match, even calling out Hunter for supposedly being unable to make the match. Of course, HHH ended up getting a ref and we kicked it off as Seth and Dean went up against each other. The outcome was predictable from the get-go, because it wasn't like they were going to have Rollins lose after winning the Rumble. This was a pretty strong match for both of them, though, but they kept it somewhat brief because they knew they had a long night ahead. Rollins hit the Stomp (which was comically over-sold by Dean) for the win and this should put their rivalry to bed.
Then we had a really weird segment where Dean sat in the center of the ring and was about to talk about what was going on with him, but Nia Jax and Tamina came out for their qualifying match for the Women's tag belt match at the upcoming Elimination Chamber and Dean got in Nia's face, and she decked him and got him out of the ring. He still looked like he wanted to fight, and I guess that's cool to do now since she was in the Men's Rumble match, but like I stated in my Rumble recap, I'm not holding my breath for WWE to start to do intergender matches again. But Nia and Tamina were facing off against the team of Alexa Bliss and Mickie James. This match was kind of ugly because, and I hate to be that person again, but Tamina is just not good. She doesn't sell well, she misses her timing on a lot of different spots, and she just looks really clumsy and that's pretty shocking for someone who's been in the business for as long as she has, and it didn't help matters that she spent a lot of time in the ring against Alexa, who is still suffering from ring rust. Eventually, Nia got the win by a double Samoan Drop to both Bliss and James and they're going to the Elimination Chamber match. I don't know what they're going to do with either Bliss or James in the near future, but we'll see how that ends up shaking out.
Then we got an extremely sad match between Baron Corbin and Kurt Angle. A few things struck me during this match: first, I'm starting to believe that the reason Corbin keeps wearing the same outfit he wore as the Constable and acting GM is that he's so delusional that he can't accept that he's lost those jobs and second is that Kurt Angle should not, under any circumstances, be wrestling anymore. He just has that glazed-over look that doesn't indicate that he's up to competing in an actual match. He could have some fun spots, but as far as an actual match, it's just gotten too scary. Each time he hit a suplex, I thought he was going to break his fucking skull open. And Corbin got the win with the Deep Six and then came back into the ring to hit End of Days on Angle. Even if watching Angle wasn't sad, this was a rivalry that worked in its infancy but now it's just too long past its expiration date.
Then the show got to maybe a more depressing low when a worn-out Finn Balor came out to address the WWE Universe and he puts over his Rumble opponent Brock Lesnar, but says that he made Lesnar believe in him. This was interrupted by Bobby Lashley and Lio Rush, where the hype man told Balor that Lashley was stronger and better than Lesnar, to which Balor pointed out that Lashley only lasted about 12 seconds in the Rumble which Lashley then began stomping a mudhole in Balor. This is the next rivalry for Balor, and odds are it will culminate at Mania in yet another Mania IC title match for Balor. This segment just was super depressing because of the fact that babyface underdogs shouldn't always have to put over their heel opponents when the babyface loses, but that seems like it's part of Lesnar's contract, so here's Finn having to do it anyway. Then we're looking at another midcard feud for Balor. Now the optimist in me says that Finn should lose a title match at the Fastlane PPV due to interference by Lio or a DQ win, and then Finn spends the next few weeks saying that he has to dig into the darkest parts of himself in their rematch. Then we get The Demon King at Mania. I've said it before and I'll say it again: that's an entrance that deserves a Mania spot. The optimist in me also wants Finn to make that title as meaningful as Seth made it during his title run, offering open challenges and the like. I don't mean to harp on this, but Fergal Devitt does go back with Matt and Nick Jackson, and losing Finn to AEW would be a massive blow, so Vince is going to want to keep Finn invested in his future.
Then we got the return of Curt Hawkins and Zack Ryder tagging against The Revival. This was a super-quick match that should have had either of them facing a team like Heath Slater and Rhyno or The Ascension. It would have given either team a win and it wouldn't have been yet another reason for Hawkins to take a loss or Ryder to be kept off TV. Ugh. But The Revival needed any win to keep some sort of legitimacy, but I don't really understand why it had to be against the likes of Hawkins and Ryder, who obviously could have benefited from a pinfall pop.
Then we got Elias who said that he no longer believed that the WWE Universe was with him, and he quickly went back to his old heel ways, but he was interrupted by Jeff Jarrett again, this time with Road Dogg in tow. They went into their old D-Generation-X stuff as Elias laid them both out. So it's confirmed basically that Elias is back in heel territory again, but this seemed to be a whole big pile of nothing to do it on. There was no real reason to turn heel again, especially when there's no real rivalry here. It's not like he's going to go against Jarrett or Road Dogg at Mania. It's segments like this that honestly make me think that when Raw is really good, it's by accident.
Then we got our second qualifying match for the Women's tag title match between Liv Morgan and Sarah Logan of the Riott Squad against the ad-hoc team of Natalya and Dana Brooke, who was subbing for Ember Moon, who was injured badly by Alexa Bliss during the Women's Rumble match when Bliss did her standing moonsault but landed instead on Ember's arm. This was a blessedly short match as Morgan scored the win off a miscommunication by Brooke. This was one of those that was never in any doubt, and I'm thankful it was over quickly. I do like Logan, but I'm just not a huge fan of Morgan at all. I know that she's super cute and she plays her character like a naughty teenager, but she doesn't do anything for me either outside or inside the ring.
Then we got what started out as really embarrassing and turned into absolute gold, and that was the open challenge match that champ Ronda Rousey put on for the Raw Women's title. The promo she tried to cut at the opening honestly just made me feel bad for her because she was trying to put over her championship match the previous night against Sasha Banks, but the crowd was either booing her or chanting Becky Lynch's name. It caused Ronda to trip over her words, but to her credit, she did address it rather than backtracking it. Promos have never ever been Ronda's strong suit, and her inability to deal with an unruly crowd demonstrated that, but again, we also have to remember that Ronda has only been doing this for just over nine months with no prior experience in this world. So I'll give her a pass on her promos. Then Bayley came out to accept the open challenge and the story of the match was Ronda having to fight from underneath as she was not 100% from her match against Banks. Bayley did some fine work, and so did Ronda, but it was just a really weird look to watch Rousey fighting from underneath against the biggest underdog in the Women's division. Again, there was never a moment's doubt and Ronda ended up getting Bayley in the Armbar for the win, and with that match, Ronda has knocked off three of the Four Horsewomen. But almost immediately after her win, Becky's music hit, and it was glorious bedlam in the arena as everyone popped like mad. Becky, nursing a bad leg, made her way down to the ring and proclaimed that, after winning the Women's Rumble, she only had one opponent in mind, and that was Rousey. Rousey then shot back a ferocious promo that almost completely obliterated the poor one she had cut about 15 minutes prior from our collective memory and became her best promo to date. But The Man stood there and took it all in complete defiance of Rousey's bravado, and this was just tremendous work from both competitors, and if Vince is smart, he's going to keep Becky away from Ronda until around Fastlane, and have them start exchanging more words and maybe a fist or two in order to build more excitement for what will now assuredly be the main event at Mania.
But then things continued to go downhill again as we got Drew McIntyre vs Braun Strowman. This match was totally unnecessary, but it ended in the worst way possible, and that was with Baron Fucking Corbin coming out and giving Strowman a chair shot that caused a DQ and allowed McIntyre and Corbin to stomp on the big man, leaving him in a heap. In a way, this is emblematic of Strowman's current status in WWE. The one thing that got Strowman over was that he was able to overcome these types of situations, or at least get payback against them later. But this helped no one. It did nothing for McIntyre because he couldn't get a clean win, it didn't do anything for Strowman as he was unable to use his brute strength to get out of this situation, and it did fuck all for Corbin. But this is going to be something we're going to be seeing a lot of in the coming months; a lot of babyfaces being beat down by heels so they can manufacture drama going into Mania. My money for Strowman at this point is being in a grudge match against McIntyre at Mania, but I'm not interested at all in that match.
Finally, we got our decision from Seth Rollins, or rather, we were about to get it when he was preempted by Paul Heyman and Brock Lesnar. Heyman told Seth that he should pick Daniel Bryan because he won't be able to beat Lesnar, and Rollins came out to get in some offense against Lesnar but that was not to be, and Lesnar hit him with several F-5's, leaving The Kingslayer in a heap.
So, yeah, this was a night that was all about setups for Mania, and some potential storylines. But it was a night with one single shining beacon of hope regarding Becky and Ronda, and that made all the awful shit we watched worth it.
Now onto Smackdown!
Smackdown opened exactly the way it should have by giving us Becky, still on her bad leg, cutting a promo about how she had selected Ronda as her Mania opponent, and this great promo was made even better by an interrupting Charlotte, who claimed all the credit for making Becky the main eventer she's become. To be fair, there's a massive amount of truth to that. If Charlotte hadn't done as good a job as selling how massive this rivalry was, Becky would have still gotten over, but not really to the same level Becky is enjoying right now. Becky would punch Charlotte in her laughing face and that led to a ringside brawl that was broken up by officials. It signified more than likely that Charlotte will find some kind of way to worm her way into that match, and while initially I was very much against that idea, I had a conversation with a fellow fan that has me thinking that I am honestly now for Charlotte to be in that match. Mania crowds are, to coin a phrase, fickle. To be fair, sitting through nearly 8 hours of wrestling will make even the biggest marks antsy, let alone the average Joe or Josephine, and this is going to be the final match of the night. And in a match with no clear heel, if it were one-on-one, it would not play as well. You add a solid heel, though, and things get a lot more unpredictable. This is how they were able to get Daniel Bryan at Mania 30, and how he picked up the win against Batista, and this is how they're going to sell this Mania's main event, and that's the way it should go. I could fantasy book Ronda and Becky one-on-one, but you need another element that's going to wake that tired crowd up and get them back into it, because this is a once-in-a-lifetime event. You have the company's biggest star up against their biggest name as the main event, and you need to make this count, not just for Mania history, but for women's wrestling.
Then came what may arguably be the absolute weirdest thing in recent WWE history; due to R-Truth's unceremonious non-entrance into the Men's Rumble match, he was granted a match for the US title against reordained champ Shinsuke Nakamura. The match looked like it was going to be pretty rote all the way; R-Truth got some offense in to kick it off, and then Nak took control, but Truth got Nak into a roll-up and the ref counted three, and signaled for the bell while in the meantime, the combatants were still fighting. R-Truth had indeed won the US title! This seemed like the most embarrassing botched count in years, but the result remained! This was so off-the-wall bizarre, it felt like it was all a massive mistake, but... yes, R-Truth is our new US champion! So.. um... yay?
His celebration didn't last long though as Rusev and Lana headed down to the ring and said that it was bad having Nakamura as the US champ, but it would be even worse if it was R-Truth. Rusev demanded an opportunity to take the belt away from Truth, and the challenge was accepted. This was when I thought that this particular match was made to cover up the botched count, because I honestly felt that Vince was in the back yelling for Rusev to get out there and take the title away from Truth so that he could lose it again to Nakamura at a future date. But this was not to be either as R-Truth caught Rusev in another roll-up win, so R-Truth won and successfully retained the title in less than 20 minutes! Then Nakamura headed back into the ring to beat Truth down, and Rusev confirmed his heel turn by joining in on the beatdown. Look, I won't lie; I was confused as all hell when these matches were over. I couldn't fucking believe they took the US title and gave it to someone who wasn't even competing on the main roster 5 months ago and has been a joke for the last few years. It seemed insane. It still is insane. I still can't believe I'm writing these words, but here they are. As far as match content, they both kinda sucked because R-Truth is 47 and can't really go anymore, so I'm going to be mildly interested in how this title reign goes, and more specifically, how long it lasts. But back to Rusev for a moment. The crowd should stay firmly behind Rusev because his babyface run was a lot of fun, so like we did with Becky, don't let him turn complete and total heel. Keep up the "Rusev Day" chants no matter what he says, and continue to cheer him. That way, like they did before, they'll have to turn him babyface again.
We got a segment that seemed to indicate that The Good Brothers were none too pleased with Rusev and Nak's beatdown of R-Truth, so they challenged the enemies to a tag bout that never happened. It seemed clear that it was supposed to happen during this episode, but that might have been either an assumption or a botch. Then we got what was supposed to be a match with Rey Mysterio vs Samoa Joe, but after Rey made it to the ring, he was called out by Zelina Vega, who was upset with him getting her banned from ringside in last week's 2 out of 3 falls match, but this was just another ruse as Andrade snuck in the ring and laid Rey out after a blocked 619 with the Hammerlock DDT. This just means that their rivalry is far from over, and that is perfectly fine with me. I'm expecting a Last Man Standing match at Elimination Chamber for these two that will likely be another MOTY candidate from these two.
Then came the celebration of Miz and Shane McMahon's Smackdown Tag title win at the Rumble. I'm going to be honest: I really liked this segment. I liked the chemistry that these two have on the mic, and it seemed like Shane was really appreciative of Miz and liked tagging with him. They brought out Miz's dad again and I don't know if it's due to Miz's acting abilities or if he was genuinely surprised to see him. I know that it dragged a bit, but I like celebrating a mismatched tag team. When Sheamus and Cesaro did it when they were still babyfaces as they got into a bar fight together, it was terrific, and this just really worked for me. It'll be even better when Miz eventually turns on Shane to create their Mania match. But this was really just an extended lead-in to determine which tag team was going to face them at Elimination Chamber. Prior to that, though, we got a backstage segment with Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville declaring their entrance into the Women's tag title Elimination Chamber match, which is what I'm assuming all the women on SD will be doing rather than having qualifying matches because there are so few women on the SD roster, and one is the champ, and the other two are embroiled in the biggest storyline of the year, and it was finally revealed that the reason Mandy Rose hates Naomi is because apparently Naomi was mean to her when Mandy had competed on Tough Enough, and sent her away crying.
Now, I'm going to go off on a tangent here, so buckle up. I am absolutely 1000% done with Corey Fucking Graves. He's three episodes away from starting to yell about Mandy Rose's "puppies". I'm just so tired of his voice screaming in my ear every other second, constantly talking over his fellow commentators, and just being an asshole. I know that heel commentators are supposed to be dicks, but he's taking this shit too far, and it's gotten much much worse the last few weeks. I'd almost rather have JBL back, but he was a cock to Mauro Ranallo, and I'm not down with any human being who'd diss the best living combat sports commentator. In fairness, this is obviously not all Corey. He's fed lines from Vince, and that's where some of this shit is coming from, but the rest of it is coming from Graves' brain. Either change your shit up, Corey, or hit the bricks.
The Four Corners #1 Contender elimination tag match began following the break as they assembled The Usos, The New Day, The Bar and Heavy Machinery. With the exception of The New Day, each team got an elimination, first with Heavy Machinery hitting Big E with The Compactor, and then The Bar hitting Tucker Knight with The Brogue Kick, and finally The Usos with The Superfly Splash on The Bar to become the #1 contenders. This was a really fun match as they utilized the Four Corners free-tag aspect of it very well, and it was a much better display of Heavy Machinery than their Raw win over The Ascension from last week. I still think those guys will have a solid future ahead of them if they keep doing what they're doing. The only complaint I have is the same complaint I've had about the Smackdown Tag division for months: where in the living fuck is Sanity? Is someone hurt? It's not like Killian Dane and Nikki Cross are on their honeymoon; she was just in the Rumble, for chrissakes! Fuck it, Vince. Just give Sanity and The Revival their releases and let them go over to AEW where they'll likely be welcome. More on this tangent later.
Then we got another segment that I loved, and that was Daniel Bryan coming into the ring with his title belt, berating the audience for being losers and praising Erick Rowan (henceforth to be known only as Rowan, because apparently no one gets to have a full name anymore) for not only his commitment to Daniel but for being an "intellectual peer" who Bryan could discuss Chaucer with (AP English for the win!), and who also cares about the environment and animal rights. Bryan continued his repudiation of all things the fans love by admitting that, like A.J. Styles had said the week before, that Bryan was a hypocrite because he carried around the WWE Championship belt, which was a belt that was indicative of waste and excess as well as being made of leather. He dropped the belt in the trash and had Rowan pull out a new title belt that was fully environmentally friendly where the title plates were made of wood and the belt was made from 100% hemp and I popped like fucking crazy when he confirmed that it was hemp. Of course, Styles would come out and interrupt which caused a snowball effect as Styles was joined by Jeff Hardy, Randy Orton, Mustafa Ali, and finally Samoa Joe, who roasted the living shit out of Hardy, Ali and Styles before Styles smacked him in the face and that kicked off a brawl between all five of them as Rowan and Bryan got out of the ring where Bryan declared that none of them were fit to challenge him for the belt, but Triple H appeared on the Tron where he countered Bryan by telling him that all of them were fit to challenge him and would do so at Elimination Chamber. This was just a fantastic finish to the show, and while it's still unclear what Bryan's story going into Mania will be, at least they have something really strong planned for Elimination Chamber.
So as usual, Raw was pretty awful, Smackdown was pretty good, and the march goes on.
Now I have to go back to my tangent about releases that I discussed before. On Tuesday, it was made known that Dean Ambrose was going to be leaving WWE in April after his contract is up. And I have just one thing to say about that: Good for him. As I've stated before here, I am 100% positive that Dean's decline began after he talked some shit on Stone Cold's podcast about Lesnar not wanting to work in their Mania 32 match that was supposed to be this epic showdown of brutality (because Brock was going to be working MMA again and didn't want to go in with potential injury) and Vince is still furious about Dean's comments about it. Despite his injury, Dean had been getting the CM Punk treatment for a while now in regards to the end of Punk's time with WWE as they started giving his character progressively shitty angles and booking. Dean was a guy who should have been near or at the top of the card for the next 5-7 years, but shit booking and unwarranted turns have hurt him. He's right to be angry about this, and he should want out. And you can almost smell the ink on the contract that AEW is drawing up for him right now. He'd be a massive get for those guys. If you think I'm way off base about Vince being vindictive about a podcast from three years ago, this is the same guy who pulled all of Chris Jericho's images off the show opening graphic and all his merch from the store once he signed with AEW and the same guy who is demanding almost everyone wearing AEW gear sitting hard camera side take their shirts off. So if Dean is even on TV over the next few months, I guaran-fucking-tee you that he's going to be everyone's punching bag. So get out while you can, Dean, and go some place where you can enjoy some creative freedom.
That's it for this recap, and I'll likely see you later tonight or tomorrow with my NXT recap (which I already know the results of, but I don't post spoilers)!
Until next time, kids...
Raw kicked off with Men's Rumble winner Seth Rollins coming out to live out a childhood dream as he stood in the ring and pointed at the Mania sign. Then Triple H came out and got emotional with Seth for a bit but then went back to kayfabe and told Seth that, by the end of the night, he had to choose who he was going to be facing at Mania, whether it was Daniel Bryan or Brock Lesnar. But then to interrupt the proceedings came Dean Ambrose, who came out like he meant it. He spit some fire like the Ambrose of old as he demanded a match, even calling out Hunter for supposedly being unable to make the match. Of course, HHH ended up getting a ref and we kicked it off as Seth and Dean went up against each other. The outcome was predictable from the get-go, because it wasn't like they were going to have Rollins lose after winning the Rumble. This was a pretty strong match for both of them, though, but they kept it somewhat brief because they knew they had a long night ahead. Rollins hit the Stomp (which was comically over-sold by Dean) for the win and this should put their rivalry to bed.
Then we had a really weird segment where Dean sat in the center of the ring and was about to talk about what was going on with him, but Nia Jax and Tamina came out for their qualifying match for the Women's tag belt match at the upcoming Elimination Chamber and Dean got in Nia's face, and she decked him and got him out of the ring. He still looked like he wanted to fight, and I guess that's cool to do now since she was in the Men's Rumble match, but like I stated in my Rumble recap, I'm not holding my breath for WWE to start to do intergender matches again. But Nia and Tamina were facing off against the team of Alexa Bliss and Mickie James. This match was kind of ugly because, and I hate to be that person again, but Tamina is just not good. She doesn't sell well, she misses her timing on a lot of different spots, and she just looks really clumsy and that's pretty shocking for someone who's been in the business for as long as she has, and it didn't help matters that she spent a lot of time in the ring against Alexa, who is still suffering from ring rust. Eventually, Nia got the win by a double Samoan Drop to both Bliss and James and they're going to the Elimination Chamber match. I don't know what they're going to do with either Bliss or James in the near future, but we'll see how that ends up shaking out.
Then we got an extremely sad match between Baron Corbin and Kurt Angle. A few things struck me during this match: first, I'm starting to believe that the reason Corbin keeps wearing the same outfit he wore as the Constable and acting GM is that he's so delusional that he can't accept that he's lost those jobs and second is that Kurt Angle should not, under any circumstances, be wrestling anymore. He just has that glazed-over look that doesn't indicate that he's up to competing in an actual match. He could have some fun spots, but as far as an actual match, it's just gotten too scary. Each time he hit a suplex, I thought he was going to break his fucking skull open. And Corbin got the win with the Deep Six and then came back into the ring to hit End of Days on Angle. Even if watching Angle wasn't sad, this was a rivalry that worked in its infancy but now it's just too long past its expiration date.
Then the show got to maybe a more depressing low when a worn-out Finn Balor came out to address the WWE Universe and he puts over his Rumble opponent Brock Lesnar, but says that he made Lesnar believe in him. This was interrupted by Bobby Lashley and Lio Rush, where the hype man told Balor that Lashley was stronger and better than Lesnar, to which Balor pointed out that Lashley only lasted about 12 seconds in the Rumble which Lashley then began stomping a mudhole in Balor. This is the next rivalry for Balor, and odds are it will culminate at Mania in yet another Mania IC title match for Balor. This segment just was super depressing because of the fact that babyface underdogs shouldn't always have to put over their heel opponents when the babyface loses, but that seems like it's part of Lesnar's contract, so here's Finn having to do it anyway. Then we're looking at another midcard feud for Balor. Now the optimist in me says that Finn should lose a title match at the Fastlane PPV due to interference by Lio or a DQ win, and then Finn spends the next few weeks saying that he has to dig into the darkest parts of himself in their rematch. Then we get The Demon King at Mania. I've said it before and I'll say it again: that's an entrance that deserves a Mania spot. The optimist in me also wants Finn to make that title as meaningful as Seth made it during his title run, offering open challenges and the like. I don't mean to harp on this, but Fergal Devitt does go back with Matt and Nick Jackson, and losing Finn to AEW would be a massive blow, so Vince is going to want to keep Finn invested in his future.
Then we got the return of Curt Hawkins and Zack Ryder tagging against The Revival. This was a super-quick match that should have had either of them facing a team like Heath Slater and Rhyno or The Ascension. It would have given either team a win and it wouldn't have been yet another reason for Hawkins to take a loss or Ryder to be kept off TV. Ugh. But The Revival needed any win to keep some sort of legitimacy, but I don't really understand why it had to be against the likes of Hawkins and Ryder, who obviously could have benefited from a pinfall pop.
Then we got Elias who said that he no longer believed that the WWE Universe was with him, and he quickly went back to his old heel ways, but he was interrupted by Jeff Jarrett again, this time with Road Dogg in tow. They went into their old D-Generation-X stuff as Elias laid them both out. So it's confirmed basically that Elias is back in heel territory again, but this seemed to be a whole big pile of nothing to do it on. There was no real reason to turn heel again, especially when there's no real rivalry here. It's not like he's going to go against Jarrett or Road Dogg at Mania. It's segments like this that honestly make me think that when Raw is really good, it's by accident.
Then we got our second qualifying match for the Women's tag title match between Liv Morgan and Sarah Logan of the Riott Squad against the ad-hoc team of Natalya and Dana Brooke, who was subbing for Ember Moon, who was injured badly by Alexa Bliss during the Women's Rumble match when Bliss did her standing moonsault but landed instead on Ember's arm. This was a blessedly short match as Morgan scored the win off a miscommunication by Brooke. This was one of those that was never in any doubt, and I'm thankful it was over quickly. I do like Logan, but I'm just not a huge fan of Morgan at all. I know that she's super cute and she plays her character like a naughty teenager, but she doesn't do anything for me either outside or inside the ring.
Then we got what started out as really embarrassing and turned into absolute gold, and that was the open challenge match that champ Ronda Rousey put on for the Raw Women's title. The promo she tried to cut at the opening honestly just made me feel bad for her because she was trying to put over her championship match the previous night against Sasha Banks, but the crowd was either booing her or chanting Becky Lynch's name. It caused Ronda to trip over her words, but to her credit, she did address it rather than backtracking it. Promos have never ever been Ronda's strong suit, and her inability to deal with an unruly crowd demonstrated that, but again, we also have to remember that Ronda has only been doing this for just over nine months with no prior experience in this world. So I'll give her a pass on her promos. Then Bayley came out to accept the open challenge and the story of the match was Ronda having to fight from underneath as she was not 100% from her match against Banks. Bayley did some fine work, and so did Ronda, but it was just a really weird look to watch Rousey fighting from underneath against the biggest underdog in the Women's division. Again, there was never a moment's doubt and Ronda ended up getting Bayley in the Armbar for the win, and with that match, Ronda has knocked off three of the Four Horsewomen. But almost immediately after her win, Becky's music hit, and it was glorious bedlam in the arena as everyone popped like mad. Becky, nursing a bad leg, made her way down to the ring and proclaimed that, after winning the Women's Rumble, she only had one opponent in mind, and that was Rousey. Rousey then shot back a ferocious promo that almost completely obliterated the poor one she had cut about 15 minutes prior from our collective memory and became her best promo to date. But The Man stood there and took it all in complete defiance of Rousey's bravado, and this was just tremendous work from both competitors, and if Vince is smart, he's going to keep Becky away from Ronda until around Fastlane, and have them start exchanging more words and maybe a fist or two in order to build more excitement for what will now assuredly be the main event at Mania.
But then things continued to go downhill again as we got Drew McIntyre vs Braun Strowman. This match was totally unnecessary, but it ended in the worst way possible, and that was with Baron Fucking Corbin coming out and giving Strowman a chair shot that caused a DQ and allowed McIntyre and Corbin to stomp on the big man, leaving him in a heap. In a way, this is emblematic of Strowman's current status in WWE. The one thing that got Strowman over was that he was able to overcome these types of situations, or at least get payback against them later. But this helped no one. It did nothing for McIntyre because he couldn't get a clean win, it didn't do anything for Strowman as he was unable to use his brute strength to get out of this situation, and it did fuck all for Corbin. But this is going to be something we're going to be seeing a lot of in the coming months; a lot of babyfaces being beat down by heels so they can manufacture drama going into Mania. My money for Strowman at this point is being in a grudge match against McIntyre at Mania, but I'm not interested at all in that match.
Finally, we got our decision from Seth Rollins, or rather, we were about to get it when he was preempted by Paul Heyman and Brock Lesnar. Heyman told Seth that he should pick Daniel Bryan because he won't be able to beat Lesnar, and Rollins came out to get in some offense against Lesnar but that was not to be, and Lesnar hit him with several F-5's, leaving The Kingslayer in a heap.
So, yeah, this was a night that was all about setups for Mania, and some potential storylines. But it was a night with one single shining beacon of hope regarding Becky and Ronda, and that made all the awful shit we watched worth it.
Now onto Smackdown!
Smackdown opened exactly the way it should have by giving us Becky, still on her bad leg, cutting a promo about how she had selected Ronda as her Mania opponent, and this great promo was made even better by an interrupting Charlotte, who claimed all the credit for making Becky the main eventer she's become. To be fair, there's a massive amount of truth to that. If Charlotte hadn't done as good a job as selling how massive this rivalry was, Becky would have still gotten over, but not really to the same level Becky is enjoying right now. Becky would punch Charlotte in her laughing face and that led to a ringside brawl that was broken up by officials. It signified more than likely that Charlotte will find some kind of way to worm her way into that match, and while initially I was very much against that idea, I had a conversation with a fellow fan that has me thinking that I am honestly now for Charlotte to be in that match. Mania crowds are, to coin a phrase, fickle. To be fair, sitting through nearly 8 hours of wrestling will make even the biggest marks antsy, let alone the average Joe or Josephine, and this is going to be the final match of the night. And in a match with no clear heel, if it were one-on-one, it would not play as well. You add a solid heel, though, and things get a lot more unpredictable. This is how they were able to get Daniel Bryan at Mania 30, and how he picked up the win against Batista, and this is how they're going to sell this Mania's main event, and that's the way it should go. I could fantasy book Ronda and Becky one-on-one, but you need another element that's going to wake that tired crowd up and get them back into it, because this is a once-in-a-lifetime event. You have the company's biggest star up against their biggest name as the main event, and you need to make this count, not just for Mania history, but for women's wrestling.
Then came what may arguably be the absolute weirdest thing in recent WWE history; due to R-Truth's unceremonious non-entrance into the Men's Rumble match, he was granted a match for the US title against reordained champ Shinsuke Nakamura. The match looked like it was going to be pretty rote all the way; R-Truth got some offense in to kick it off, and then Nak took control, but Truth got Nak into a roll-up and the ref counted three, and signaled for the bell while in the meantime, the combatants were still fighting. R-Truth had indeed won the US title! This seemed like the most embarrassing botched count in years, but the result remained! This was so off-the-wall bizarre, it felt like it was all a massive mistake, but... yes, R-Truth is our new US champion! So.. um... yay?
His celebration didn't last long though as Rusev and Lana headed down to the ring and said that it was bad having Nakamura as the US champ, but it would be even worse if it was R-Truth. Rusev demanded an opportunity to take the belt away from Truth, and the challenge was accepted. This was when I thought that this particular match was made to cover up the botched count, because I honestly felt that Vince was in the back yelling for Rusev to get out there and take the title away from Truth so that he could lose it again to Nakamura at a future date. But this was not to be either as R-Truth caught Rusev in another roll-up win, so R-Truth won and successfully retained the title in less than 20 minutes! Then Nakamura headed back into the ring to beat Truth down, and Rusev confirmed his heel turn by joining in on the beatdown. Look, I won't lie; I was confused as all hell when these matches were over. I couldn't fucking believe they took the US title and gave it to someone who wasn't even competing on the main roster 5 months ago and has been a joke for the last few years. It seemed insane. It still is insane. I still can't believe I'm writing these words, but here they are. As far as match content, they both kinda sucked because R-Truth is 47 and can't really go anymore, so I'm going to be mildly interested in how this title reign goes, and more specifically, how long it lasts. But back to Rusev for a moment. The crowd should stay firmly behind Rusev because his babyface run was a lot of fun, so like we did with Becky, don't let him turn complete and total heel. Keep up the "Rusev Day" chants no matter what he says, and continue to cheer him. That way, like they did before, they'll have to turn him babyface again.
We got a segment that seemed to indicate that The Good Brothers were none too pleased with Rusev and Nak's beatdown of R-Truth, so they challenged the enemies to a tag bout that never happened. It seemed clear that it was supposed to happen during this episode, but that might have been either an assumption or a botch. Then we got what was supposed to be a match with Rey Mysterio vs Samoa Joe, but after Rey made it to the ring, he was called out by Zelina Vega, who was upset with him getting her banned from ringside in last week's 2 out of 3 falls match, but this was just another ruse as Andrade snuck in the ring and laid Rey out after a blocked 619 with the Hammerlock DDT. This just means that their rivalry is far from over, and that is perfectly fine with me. I'm expecting a Last Man Standing match at Elimination Chamber for these two that will likely be another MOTY candidate from these two.
Then came the celebration of Miz and Shane McMahon's Smackdown Tag title win at the Rumble. I'm going to be honest: I really liked this segment. I liked the chemistry that these two have on the mic, and it seemed like Shane was really appreciative of Miz and liked tagging with him. They brought out Miz's dad again and I don't know if it's due to Miz's acting abilities or if he was genuinely surprised to see him. I know that it dragged a bit, but I like celebrating a mismatched tag team. When Sheamus and Cesaro did it when they were still babyfaces as they got into a bar fight together, it was terrific, and this just really worked for me. It'll be even better when Miz eventually turns on Shane to create their Mania match. But this was really just an extended lead-in to determine which tag team was going to face them at Elimination Chamber. Prior to that, though, we got a backstage segment with Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville declaring their entrance into the Women's tag title Elimination Chamber match, which is what I'm assuming all the women on SD will be doing rather than having qualifying matches because there are so few women on the SD roster, and one is the champ, and the other two are embroiled in the biggest storyline of the year, and it was finally revealed that the reason Mandy Rose hates Naomi is because apparently Naomi was mean to her when Mandy had competed on Tough Enough, and sent her away crying.
Now, I'm going to go off on a tangent here, so buckle up. I am absolutely 1000% done with Corey Fucking Graves. He's three episodes away from starting to yell about Mandy Rose's "puppies". I'm just so tired of his voice screaming in my ear every other second, constantly talking over his fellow commentators, and just being an asshole. I know that heel commentators are supposed to be dicks, but he's taking this shit too far, and it's gotten much much worse the last few weeks. I'd almost rather have JBL back, but he was a cock to Mauro Ranallo, and I'm not down with any human being who'd diss the best living combat sports commentator. In fairness, this is obviously not all Corey. He's fed lines from Vince, and that's where some of this shit is coming from, but the rest of it is coming from Graves' brain. Either change your shit up, Corey, or hit the bricks.
The Four Corners #1 Contender elimination tag match began following the break as they assembled The Usos, The New Day, The Bar and Heavy Machinery. With the exception of The New Day, each team got an elimination, first with Heavy Machinery hitting Big E with The Compactor, and then The Bar hitting Tucker Knight with The Brogue Kick, and finally The Usos with The Superfly Splash on The Bar to become the #1 contenders. This was a really fun match as they utilized the Four Corners free-tag aspect of it very well, and it was a much better display of Heavy Machinery than their Raw win over The Ascension from last week. I still think those guys will have a solid future ahead of them if they keep doing what they're doing. The only complaint I have is the same complaint I've had about the Smackdown Tag division for months: where in the living fuck is Sanity? Is someone hurt? It's not like Killian Dane and Nikki Cross are on their honeymoon; she was just in the Rumble, for chrissakes! Fuck it, Vince. Just give Sanity and The Revival their releases and let them go over to AEW where they'll likely be welcome. More on this tangent later.
Then we got another segment that I loved, and that was Daniel Bryan coming into the ring with his title belt, berating the audience for being losers and praising Erick Rowan (henceforth to be known only as Rowan, because apparently no one gets to have a full name anymore) for not only his commitment to Daniel but for being an "intellectual peer" who Bryan could discuss Chaucer with (AP English for the win!), and who also cares about the environment and animal rights. Bryan continued his repudiation of all things the fans love by admitting that, like A.J. Styles had said the week before, that Bryan was a hypocrite because he carried around the WWE Championship belt, which was a belt that was indicative of waste and excess as well as being made of leather. He dropped the belt in the trash and had Rowan pull out a new title belt that was fully environmentally friendly where the title plates were made of wood and the belt was made from 100% hemp and I popped like fucking crazy when he confirmed that it was hemp. Of course, Styles would come out and interrupt which caused a snowball effect as Styles was joined by Jeff Hardy, Randy Orton, Mustafa Ali, and finally Samoa Joe, who roasted the living shit out of Hardy, Ali and Styles before Styles smacked him in the face and that kicked off a brawl between all five of them as Rowan and Bryan got out of the ring where Bryan declared that none of them were fit to challenge him for the belt, but Triple H appeared on the Tron where he countered Bryan by telling him that all of them were fit to challenge him and would do so at Elimination Chamber. This was just a fantastic finish to the show, and while it's still unclear what Bryan's story going into Mania will be, at least they have something really strong planned for Elimination Chamber.
So as usual, Raw was pretty awful, Smackdown was pretty good, and the march goes on.
Now I have to go back to my tangent about releases that I discussed before. On Tuesday, it was made known that Dean Ambrose was going to be leaving WWE in April after his contract is up. And I have just one thing to say about that: Good for him. As I've stated before here, I am 100% positive that Dean's decline began after he talked some shit on Stone Cold's podcast about Lesnar not wanting to work in their Mania 32 match that was supposed to be this epic showdown of brutality (because Brock was going to be working MMA again and didn't want to go in with potential injury) and Vince is still furious about Dean's comments about it. Despite his injury, Dean had been getting the CM Punk treatment for a while now in regards to the end of Punk's time with WWE as they started giving his character progressively shitty angles and booking. Dean was a guy who should have been near or at the top of the card for the next 5-7 years, but shit booking and unwarranted turns have hurt him. He's right to be angry about this, and he should want out. And you can almost smell the ink on the contract that AEW is drawing up for him right now. He'd be a massive get for those guys. If you think I'm way off base about Vince being vindictive about a podcast from three years ago, this is the same guy who pulled all of Chris Jericho's images off the show opening graphic and all his merch from the store once he signed with AEW and the same guy who is demanding almost everyone wearing AEW gear sitting hard camera side take their shirts off. So if Dean is even on TV over the next few months, I guaran-fucking-tee you that he's going to be everyone's punching bag. So get out while you can, Dean, and go some place where you can enjoy some creative freedom.
That's it for this recap, and I'll likely see you later tonight or tomorrow with my NXT recap (which I already know the results of, but I don't post spoilers)!
Until next time, kids...
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