RAW Deal: Rollins in the deep

NEW ORLEANS, USA —The future has never been brighter.

Let me tell you one thing: if the Royal Rumble pay-per-view happened this Sunday instead of the next, I would have no protests at all against a Seth Rollins championship victory. I never thought that a Cena/Lesnar rematch would actually need the presence of Mr. Money in the Bank—Cena and Lesnar still have some unexplored potential—but after this Monday night, after stomping Cena and Lesnar’s heads into the Superdome’s basement, I’m hyped.

Granted, it might end up mostly being another Cena/Rollins affair (which we’ve already seen too much of in the past month after TLC) with Lesnar only popping in at every other spot or so, but the mere fact that Rollins stands more of a chance than the other two to fly home from Philly as the new champ is reason enough to tune in. That, and Curb Stomps for everyone.

I’ve mentioned in previous columns, especially for the last RAW of 2014, how he’s suddenly catapulted himself into the top heel spot (yes, even above Lesnar and Paul Heyman) but what he did this Monday solidifies him even further. He’s now officially deserving of all the over-the-top onscreen monikers he’s being given; everything that’s been annoying about him is, after taking the time to let it all soak in, a revelation that he knows what he’s doing as a heel. He, or at least whoever’s in charge of piloting his character. Or both. On top of that, he knows how to pull it off.

Yes, it’s easy to be a dastardly villain. All you have to do is give in to your basic urges and disregard the social contract and any sense of morality. But in today’s wrestling, smarter fans tend to praise the heels if they do their jobs right—meaning, being really entertaining—and that’s what’s gotten guys like Paul Heyman and Dolph Ziggler paradoxical cheers at the height of their villainy.

The best heels, however, know that they have to keep ahead of the game and stay loathed. The people behind the Seth Rollins character just get this: this is why Rollins, a damn fine wrestler who could outwrestle most of the roster, still needs the Authority’s patronage. This is why he needs the intervention of Kane, J&J Security, and Big Show. This is why he needs to spew droning, curly-mustache-twirling evil villain promos that tell you things you already know.

Because without all these things, you’re going to cheer for him even harder, and that’s not what anyone wants for the top heel in the game. Everyone behind Rollins wants you to hate him. If you don’t hate him even a little bit, he’ll have failed.

The worst part, though? Now that you know all this, if you’ve taken even a little bit of appreciation for him from all this, it mighthave gotten harder for you to be annoyed.

But if not, then hey, it all works for him.

High spots:

OOOOH YEAH! The Macho Man Randy Savage is officially the first entry into this year’s Hall of Fame class!

This has been a RAW that felt like it took forever to get to the end of hour three, but I have to admit that there was a lot of good wrestling on the show, regardless of their respective finishes. Cena/Rollins delivered as usual, but there was New Day/Kidd & Cesaro, Naomi/Alicia Fox, Rusev/Ambrose (which we’ll discuss in low blows), and even… Roman Reigns/Luke Harper.
Daniel Bryan is finally back in action, giving us a taste of what he’ll be doing against Kane on this week’s SmackDown. It’s so refreshing to see Bryan do his thing again, and you don’t realize how much you miss the energy he keeps bringing to the ring if you don’t know how life is like without him. From what I’ve seen, though, it seems that he’s not changing up most of his bread-and-butter, and I’m afraid for him because that’s what gave him his injuries in the first place. On the other hand, however, Bryan doing all of that again must mean that he’s doing better than we expected, healthwise.

Speaking of which, the Authority are just great heels, for the same reasons I praised Rollins’s heel work. Their work magnifies further when it’s Bryan they’re bullying.
Big Show, too. He’s been displaying smart heel work in this feud against Roman Reigns.
Speaking of Reigns, he’s slowly been getting better in the ring, but I noticed that he works a lot better wrestling on the defensive. That’s okay for a Hogan-esque face character whose best sequences will be the comeback, but your main guy also needs to learn how to entertainingly dominate on the offensive in the events if he has to.
I’m also glad that Big Show’s attempted distraction doesn’t end in a Reigns loss. Too many of those finishes lately.
Bray Wyatt cut an underrated promo that was more straightforward than anything he’s ever done so far. Basically, it’s him declaring he’s going to run amok in the Royal Rumble, and everyone in it should just RUN! Can’t get any simpler than that—it just works.
I said it last week and I’ll say it again: Booker T is such an improvement on the announce team, mistakes and all. He doesn’t always hit his spots, but he’s putting in way more effort than Lawler does.

Low blows:

Oh boy, where do we begin? Perhaps we should mention how Cena declares that he will sit at home if he wins the championship. How does this tie in with him being the anti-Lesnar? Granted, it’s easy to say that you’d rather sit at home than go to work under the Authority, but what exactly does that change? It’s not like they can’t strip him of the title.
By the time they roll around to the contract signing segment, Cena is no longer concerned about the lost jobs of his three teammates, and is completely focused on winning the triple threat. Everything Triple H and Stephanie have been saying about him is true, then—he’s just the king of broken promises. Rollins has to be the one to remind him about Ziggler, Rowan, and Ryback’s jobs, which he pretty much no-sells.
WWE using TMZ to hype the Randy Savage induction is the weirdest gimmick ever. Are they doing this because TMZ was able to leak the upcoming induction before RAW? Or did they leak the news to TMZ themselves just so they could run this angle? Either way, they should’ve just ignored all the rumors and made the announcement all the same.
The Ascension’s gimmick has now literally fully devolved to “we are better than the old tag teams who have obviously inspired us!” As in this is literally their character now.
This week’s Ascension burial is even worse than last week’s. On top of JBL burying them louder than before, it’s now Booker’s job to defend them and give them the benefit of the doubt. Booker T, the face color commentator. What does this make the Ascension, then? Are they still heels because they proclaim to be better than the Road Warriors, Demolition, et al? Or are they now faces because the mean color commentator is completely discrediting them, the good color commentator is willing to give them a chance, and they just look pitiful in the entire process? #FireJBL
What in the world were these Dean Ambrose segments? They helped nothing. If it was to restart the Dean vs. the Authority storyline, I didn’t quite get that at all. Ambrose was his usual funny self, but it did nothing for his match with Rusev.
And about that match with Rusev, I get that they were telling a different kind of story with Rusev working on Ambrose’s leg in an attempt to cripple him, and that they were trying to protect him by having Ambrose lose via (drumroll) referee stoppage. Guess what: that TKO hurt more than it helped. We were robbed of a solid main event match.

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– Rappler.com