Mike Tedesco’s RAW Thoughts
December 2, 2014
By: Mike Tedesco of Wrestleview.com
I’ve literally been sitting at my computer for the last half hour trying to think of something — anything — positive to say about this show, but so far I’m coming up empty. There really isn’t any other way to put it other than it was just an incredibly boring show. The crowd was dead for like the third week in a row, the matches were either really bad or impressively mediocre, and the writing was lazy.
What else is there to say? I really don’t believe you can enjoy this show if you watch it uninterrupted for three hours straight. It’s just impossible. If you did that and were entertained by this show, then you must have had an incredible Monday leading up to it. Like seriously, did you win the lottery?
For the second week in a row, the show opened up with a long, long promo segment. It was a half-hour once again before we even got our first match. The one positive thing I can say about the first segment is they quickly did away with the Anonymous RAW General Manager. They were smart enough to realize that the return of that gimmick was so poorly received last week that this week they just got it out of the way in one segment and were done with it. Unfortunately, that’s all I can say that’s positive about the segment.
It was just way too long, and I’m not sure what they accomplished in a half-hour couldn’t have been accomplished in ten minutes. Ok, I lied. I know it could be accomplished in ten minutes. That’s the problem with these three-hour shows. Everything has to be dragged out to the max because they don’t have enough to get to the finish line if they don’t. I just read through my recap of that opening segment, and it was like they went in circles for twenty minutes before they even got to the meat of anything. The meat of it was that John Cena will face Seth Rollins at WWE TLC in a Tables Match. If John Cena loses, he will no longer be the number one contender for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. That’s big news, but it took about twenty minutes to get there. By that point, even I was nodding off. Cena and Rollins don’t have the rivalry or the promo-skills to take a segment that far on their own. No one does.
Finally, a brawl breaks out and everyone under the sun comes out to fight. The remnants of Team Authority laid out everyone to end the segment. By that point, the crowd was already dead and not reacting to anything.
I know I criticized the crowd in Roanoke a few weeks back for being dead, but this is like the third or fourth week in a row that the crowd has been absolutely silent for the shows. Vince McMahon claimed on the WWE Network that he listens to the crowd. I don’t think that’s true. If he was listening, he should be freaking out about where the business is right now.
I could continue on about how boring and sad this show was, but to be honest I just don’t have the energy for it. I’d be repeating everything I’ve been saying for the last few weeks. I simply don’t feel like doing that.
Believe me, I love wrestling. I love watching it, writing about it, and recapping it. It shouldn’t be a chore to do it. I hate being down on the product (if you’ve followed by work through the years, you know I’ve been more than fair with WWE), but why should I waste my time critiquing a roster that has a bunch of people Vince McMahon himself has said are lazy and not willing to grab that brass ring? As blatantly false as that is (the truth is everyone is walking on egg shells scared to be fired), it comes across that way on television.
Bottom line is this: if you missed the show last night, you missed absolutely nothing. Hopefully next week will be better with the Slammy Awards special.
Bump of the Night: Big Show hitting Rowan with the steel steps
Match of the Night: The six-man tag team match **
Final Rating: * 1/2
E-Mail – MikeyT817@gmail.com
Twitter – @MikeTedescoWV
Check out my recap of this week’s RAW here. Be sure to check out my Smackdown recap this Friday!
Thanks for reading!
Mike Tedesco is the official recapper of WWE RAW and Smackdown for Wrestleview.com.