RAW Deal: After Mania

DALLAS, USA – The dust has settled, a new Empire is standing before us, and the sun is rising on yet another era.

No matter how you felt about WrestleMania, it can’t be denied that the brand new start the RAW after brings is always exciting. There’s a crackle of tangible anticipation in the air – for those who are still around, at least—and there’s some hope that things will be better this time. It might be a naïve hope, especially since that glow is likely to wear off sooner than later, but it’s hope nonetheless. For weary, jaded fans, the novelty of new superstars and angles is refreshing. For newer or more casual fans, it might be the energy that ensures their loyalty to the brand.

This Monday’s RAW brought in some new faces. Let’s take a closer look at who they are:

Baron Corbin

If you religiously watch NXT, or at least caught WrestleMania in its entirety, then you’re probably already familiar with Baron Corbin. He represents an interesting case in contemporary WWE: once upon a time, the preferred WWE mold was always the huge hoss who may have come from American football or bodybuilding, before it eventually gravitated, with the transcendence of Daniel Bryan, to smaller but more popular independent stars who could work.

Look at the last batch of new faces: AJ Styles, Sami Zayn, Tyler Breeze, Neville. The WWE doesn’t get a guy like Baron Corbin anymore.

If anything at all, Corbin, who used to be an offensive lineman in the NFL, is living proof that with the right talent and work ethic, the current WWE developmental system works. It might not work perfectly, but it works. Corbin went from being a guy who literally only did one move in his matches to a worker who could hang with the best wrestlers on the planet.

 

How to make him work? Don’t pull a Roman Reigns and overcomplicate the character. Corbin’s strengths in NXT laid in his grim, brooding character, and you’re going to strip all that if you overscript his lines. Let him be himself. I’d like to see Corbin/Lesnar one day.

The Vaudevillains

Here’s what you need to know about the Vaudevillains: they’re old school.

That’s about it. They’re not the best team one could pluck out of NXT, but they’re not a bad hand if we’re talking about resuscitating the main roster tag division. The problem is they need a lot of commitment to make the gimmick work, and they need to polish their style a little more. As it stands, they don’t know enough to properly bring the old school fashion of wrestling to the forefront; it just looks like they work slower and simpler than the rest of the roster, and there’s more to that than meets the eye.

 

They don’t have to do the gimmicky silent film segments that got them over on NXT; I do like their tweaked edge in them saying they’re now “gentlemen bruisers.” That’s cool. It’s up to the writing team to make this work – let’s hope they don’t end up being this year’s Ascension.

 

The Colons

If you’ve always thought the Los Matadores gimmick was silly, then I hope that doesn’t stop you from taking the Colons – Primo and Epico – seriously. They’re a highly-underrated team that keeps getting saddled with terrible, uninspired writing.

 

I’m glad that they’re just going to be themselves – with some character motivation this time – but is it too much to ask for them to be the Colons? The family legacy doesn’t have to be the entire gimmick, but giving them actual names (is Epico even a real Puerto Rican name?) and slapping the Colon surname on them makes them a little more human and a little less create-a-wrestler.

Also, could this be the return of wrestlers with actual characters? It seems inconsistent (more on that later) but we’ll see.

Enzo and Cass

You might have heard a lot of buzz about the Realest Guys in the Room. You might have even seen Roadblock and come away impressed with them in their shot at the NXT Tag Team Championships. For those of you who don’t know, you should know, so watch this entire segment:

 

Do you hear that? That’s the entire crowd reciting the Enzo and Cass spiel word for word. If you think that it’s just because this is the RAW after Mania, I heard the exact same thing back at Roadblock. These two already have the crowd in the palm of their hand.

They’re going to need to switch up that spiel eventually, now that they’re going to be appearing more than once every couple of weeks. But that’s the magic of Enzo Amore and Colin Cassady – they don’t talk like most people on the main roster, and it looks like they’re not about to. Where Baron Corbin is already being dragged down with haughty, overproduced scripts, Amore at the very least is pure fire on the mic. He’s the kind of guy who’d rather get into trouble saying stuff afterwards than getting censored beforehand. The best personalities trump actual wrestling, and these two have got it made.

Apollo Crews

Sometimes, the WWE roster is redundant. You’ve got two guys with separate skill sets that one good, talented guy easily has, and you only keep the other two around for some depth in the midcard. I mean, if you take Titus O’Neil’s look, charisma, and power and Neville’s natural athleticism, you get Apollo Crews. And Michael Cole is right: if you haven’t been watching NXT, you don’t know what you’re missing.

 

It might not have been the best, most explosive debut, but that’s a mere sliver of the things Crews can do. JBL may have been reading off cue cards, but he’s on the nose when he says Crews has “megastar” written all over him. He might not be as tall as the best of them, but he can definitely hang, and I think he’s got the total package that’ll make him a top WWE babyface somewhere down the line. 

If no other wrestler truly replaces John Cena during or after his retirement, I’m putting my money on Crews.

Cesaro

You don’t need any introduction for this man, but I’m just really, really happy he’s back. The upper midcard and main event needs Cesaro, and I believe he’s finally got the support that could turn into the right kind of momentum for that run. It’s only a matter of time, fellow Swiss Superman fans.

 

Look at that entrance. That’s a main eventer entrance right there.

Do you listen to podcasts? Would you want to listen to a local podcast about pro wrestling? If the answers to 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 former voice of PWR Raf Camus!

This week, they put out two post-WrestleMania podcasts: one for after NXT Takeover: Dallas and WrestleMania 32 , and one for the post-Mania RAW! – Rappler.com