RAW Deal: Brass rings and gold belts

CHICAGO—He needs to connect.

When Vince McMahon spoke with Stone Cold Steve Austin on the inaugural edition of his podcast on the WWE Network, among the topics in their conversation was the handling (or lack thereof) of young talents who were busting their butts and putting their bodies on the line to get over with fans.

One such talent was (Very) European superstar Cesaro, known to independent wrestling fans as Claudio Castagnoli, who regularly wows WWE crowds with nearly-inhuman feats of old-school strongman strength and springy energy from a relatively wiry frame. When Austin put McMahon on the spot as to why talents like Cesaro aren’t getting featured more prominently, all McMahon had to say about it was he needed to connect. He apparently wasn’t connecting because he was Swiss. His words, not mine.

I can write a thousand columns on why I believe Vince McMahon is out of touch with his own product and his own fanbase, and while I would really, really love to right now (it’s what I do), this is not the time and place.

What matters is that Cesaro has been working hard since that day to try and grab McMahon’s metaphorical “brass rings”—the trite symbolism of making it, in any industry—and this week’s episode of Monday Night RAW could be a culmination of all that effort.

Cesaro came back out to answer John Cena’s United States Championship Open Challenge after getting his big chance thrown out last week, care of Kevin Owens, and he just brought it. If you needed something to keep you believing in the WWE product, this was your sign, because every now and then they’ll throw us a bone before they dangle the fruit farther away from our mouths again.

This, like last week’s affair, was a match that didn’t need to wow crowds from the beginning with ridiculous, finisher-esque moves. It was just a match in which both men came in with a mission, understood the stakes, and actually fought for those stakes, in the process making everyone watching believe what they believed. Nobody gave up, nobody wanted to give up until Cena decisively and believably put Cesaro away.

Oftentimes, that’s the simplest story you can tell. In pro wrestling, simple is almost always the strongest.

If you’re a WWE fan, if you’re a John Cena fan, if you’re a Cesaro fan, if you consider yourself a fan of good professional wrestling at all, please go out of your way to find this match. Watch it. Bookmark it. Remember it when it’s time for the final analysis, when it’s time to sing the praises of either man. Remember it to remember that Cena is not the dud loud crowds insist he is, never in this day and age, and that Cesaro is a talent so phenomenal that today, we’re really only waiting for those who hold the gun to finally pull the trigger.

Wrestling is great when it wants to be. Tell your friends.

High spots:

• I know I said last week that I was so tired of the Dolph Ziggler/Lana/Rusev/Summer Rae love quadrangle, but I realized it was only because I was afraid Rusev was going to tough out the entire feud without having to wrestle. I am so glad his ankle has finally healed up, or healed up enough for him to work, because now we’re in for a barnburner of a match at Battleground.
• It’s always fun and games when a car gets smashed on live TV. Heard that Brock accidentally hit a fan with the car door he threw, though. Hope that fan is all right.
• FINALLY, a King Barrett win!

Low blows:

• Despite the strong main event, this actually wasn’t a show to write home about on the whole. Three hours is really just too long (again) and it would have been a stronger show if it went two hours and all the fluff was cut. You can still have a 30-minute main event.
• If the WWE can splurge on a brand-new Cadillac to be destroyed by Brock Lesnar, why couldn’t they send Kane on an actual trip to Hawaii to be filmed? To photoshop Kane on pictures of beaches and waves reduces him—and by extension, the Authority—to mere caricatures of bad guys. The reason why people refuse to buy into the Authority in the first place is that they seem more like cartoon villains than legitimately threatening people in power. Would you treat Triple H and Stephanie that way? J&J Security is a bit more forgivable because they really are there as the foils to everyone else’s straight man, but it would be best if the Authority took themselves seriously on the whole. I mean, after all, the graphics department is under their employ, correct?
• I know that we must beat the hero down so that he’ll find the strength to overcome the odds, but I feel like this entire Paige-has-no-friends storyline is becoming tedius. The key to a good chase is to give the protagonist some false hope so that he or she and everyone watching feels like he or she is getting somewhere, and in a major way at that, before something else pulls the rug from under his or her feet again. That’s how Daniel Bryan kept looking strong on the way to his big WrestleMania XXX win. If the hero just stays down, we won’t ever believe he or she has a chance at all.
• I want to see a full Roman Reigns/Sheamus match with a decisive finish.
• And while we’re talking about Reigns, how are we going to buy his love for his family if he isn’t even being given a chance to speak about that? All he’s doing is chasing after Bray Wyatt without justifying himself, even if his cause is something that needs little justifying to the audience.

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 voice of PWR) Raf Camus! On their latest episode, Stan goes to Singapore to watch the WWE live and tells us all about it! Listen to it here! – Rappler.com