RAW Deal: Ruining a good thing

INDIANAPOLIS, IN—Way to take a good thing and ruin it.

After praising a great creative move in making WWE World Heavyweight Champion Seth Rollins go on an odyssey to become the champion the Authority knew he could be, the WWE promptly restores the previous status quo.

The story now is Brock Lesnar, a mountain of a man (but no Mountain), cannot possibly take on Seth Rollins plus a reunited Authority front. That’s always been the case for anyone who dares challenge Rollins, which was why they parted ways so he could legitimize his title reign in a solid feud against Dean Ambrose.

On the surface, it makes sense. John Cena and Roman Reigns could not defeat Brock Lesnar because Cena and Reigns were acting on their own. In retrospect, those feuds never really set out to paint Lesnar as some invincible deity; the stories were just that Brock Lesnar was simply better than a mere man. But when you take not two, but three or four men against Lesnar, the Beast will cave in. And that’s normal.

However, we thought the entire point of the Authority bringing back and undoing Brock Lesnar’s suspension was to test Seth Rollins’s mettle as champion, so why are they all trying to get away with the one thing that makes him come across as a fraud? And that’s not just a theory—those were Kane’s exact words before Rollins’s championship match at Battleground, and it has always been the unsaid sentiments of Triple H and Stephanie McMahon.

The Authority tells Rollins that he had to be the bigger man and apologize to the cohorts he had crossed, so does this mean that all it takes to be the good champion they want him to be is the ability to say sorry? They’re heels, after all, but here we thought that we’re finally getting to paint shades of gray.

To be totally fair, it’s still possible that this isn’t the endgame. Wrestling is a neverending soap opera, and every episode is just one chapter of a bigger story. It’s possible that we’re immaturely judging the direction, but these are trust issues at play—no one drops the ball harder on good things than Vince McMahon and his erratic, whimsical mind. And they wonder why fewer and fewer people take the WWE’s brand of wrestling—and storytelling—seriously nowadays.

I’m still holding out hope that Rollins gets to go on his Odyssey.

High spots:

• Even though things seem to be highly uninspired all night, the match between Roman Reigns and Sheamus might be the highlight of the show. Reigns is making up for his current limitations by bringing an energy to his offense that’s only second to Dolph Ziggler’s. That’s the less-is-more philosophy I was talking about, and the cream of the crop have a pretty good grasp of it.

• The Roman Reigns vs. Bray Wyatt feud might be the best thing about the show right now, slightly overshadowing the build to Lesnar/Rollins. It’s good to see both Reigns acting very human and Wyatt striking at him concretely instead of abstractly, as he was prone to doing before.

• Speaking of Dolph Ziggler, HE FINALLY WON A MATCH WITH THE SUPERKICK!

• Speaking of energy, someone please give Zack Ryder a push. He has all the reasons to be lazy and unmotivated, but instead he’s using whatever unfavorable situation he’s in to turn in some of the best performances of his career so far. In a show that seems devoid of life, electricity is what will make you stand out.

• But thank god King Barrett finally won a match.

• I’m not quite sure what to feel about #Flyback, but it’s good that The Big Guy is adding new facets to his game. Going for a top-rope splash instead of Shellshocked kind of made him look weak, however, because he never tried the move before busting out the new finisher. Ryback should have attempted to lift Mark Henry on his shoulders first, and if he couldn’t, that’s when he should’ve gone for it. Now everyone’s just gonna assume that he wasn’t strong enough. (But seeing as he’s managed to lift Big Show for it before, I don’t see why he couldn’t pull it off.)

Low blows:

• I keep saying it every week, but it needs to be said until someone finally listens: three hours of hurting the entire product. The company has so much room to fill that it either ends up bloating the show (which is most of the time) or dangerously prolonging TV matches enough to risk injury to their stars. If this episode felt lifeless to you, it’s because everyone—from the wrestlers to the writers to the fans—is tired of wrestling for three hours every Monday night.

• Dean Ambrose needs to evolve his game a little bit more now. The rebound lariat is not fun anymore.

• The Ryback and Big Show fight backstage was pretty stupid. How do we go in with doubt and support for the hero champion when we see that he can take out a seven-foot giant easily? Show should’ve won that fight with one KO punch. You know, his finisher that comes more abruptly than an RKO?

• If you’re arguing that the Bella Twins are tweeners instead of petty, indecisive, and plastic ladies who can’t decide what they really want to be, just take note that tweeners do not change who they are. Brock Lesnar never changed who he is; he was always a mean-spirited bully who got cheered by a rebellious crowd. His overall alignment was dictated by who he faced, but he never changed his behavior to suit that alignment. The Bellas go from oppressed and sympathetic (when they face Naomi and Tamina) to bitchy and smug (when they face Paige, or any other Diva). There’s a difference.

• This might be the first promo battle between Kevin Owens and John Cena that came off as a dud. The lines were clear, and the motivations behind what both men were saying were pretty nuanced—Owens is going the self-pity route, which no one ever likes to hear, and Cena is appropriately calling him out on it—but both men, especially Cena, were trying way too hard. Cena became a caricature of himself and all the angry, hokey, gung-ho faces that came before him, while Owens looked bad by association and by enabling it in the first place. They almost had me, they really did, but they completely lost me when Cena started doing his idea of an interpretative dance.

Do you listen to podcasts? Would you want to listen to a local podcast about pro wrestling? If the answers to most of those questions—especially that last one—are yes, then you should check out the cleverly-named Smark Gilas-Pilipinas Podcast—featuring Mellow 94.7 DJ and PWR General Manager Stan Sy, wrestling writer Romeo Moran, and all-around multimedia person (and voice of PWR) Raf Camus! On their latest episode, PWR stars Jake de Leon and Bombay Suarez return to the show and discuss the debacle at Wrevolution X! Listen to it here!