Welcome to the Uncooked Raw Reaction for the Post Summerslam edition.
Previously on the Uncooked Raw Reaction, "Go-Home Raw, You're Drunk": Seth Rollins spent all night looking for either a make-believe demon or a pretty sweet paint job (depending on your point of view), finally found what he was looking for, and ran away. Plus Rusev and Roman Reigns had a 20 minute non-title match that Roman won clean, which set up Roman trying to Spear Rusev to death at the PPV. Because how dare Rusev stand up for his wife.
You can read my Live Blog from Last Night HERE.
Just so you know, I reserve the right to steal jokes from myself last night and use them here today.
I promise not to file a Copyright Claim against myself.
Let's get this started.
Demon King, we hardly knew Ye.
So this sucks.
At Summerslam Seth Rollins Buckle Barricade Bombed Finn Balor right onto the injured list for six months.
That's the sucks part.
Finn suffered a torn labrum and a disclocated shoulder, popped it right back into place, and finished the match.
And that, my friends, is bad-ass.
I confess. I’m a Finn fan. A Balor backer.
A lot of people, my boss included, are bothered by the fact that he has a limited move-set. I won’t argue with those people, and I especially won’t argue with my boss, since he’s a nice man who keeps me employed, but what I find astounding about Finn is that he manages to put on great, compelling matches while basically doing a bunch of kicks. Front Dropkick, Pele Kick, hell even his finish is him dropkicking his opponents sternum while they're lying on the mat. But he makes it all look great, takes a great bump, sells well, and tells a good story in the ring.
I'm not alone in thinking this, but by no means is this opinion unanimous. I get that.
However, what happened on Sunday was objectively pretty awesome. The crowd popped like crazy when he won, and rightfully so. It was the fastest a debuting superstar had ever become champion. The WWE put a rocket on this guy's back, took all the love that he generated among fans in NXT (and all over the world) and decided to ride that wave.
Then the wave broke and everybody started to drown. Or the wave was full of great white sharks. Sometimes I'm not good at metaphors.
The WWE announced yesterday that Finn would be out six months with that torn labrum, and because of this, he'd have to vacate the Twizzler Title. Which is a shame, since he seemed to like it so much. It was perfect for him.
Anyway, Finn comes out, and cuts a great promo about how he'll be back when he's healthy to stake his claim to the Cherry Championship.
Some thought it was a bit too somber:
But I get it. Finn worked his whole life to get to this point, he won the title in his first month on the WWE Main Roster, he gets injured and has to miss half a year. That's gotta be hard to take. Especially since we all seem to think Finn's a kid who'll bounce back and he's got plenty of time to get a great run in WWE. But he's 35. Six months out of the picture is a long time for a guy that age.
However, he will be back, maybe in time for the Royal Rumble, and when he's ready, I hope I see him pop up out of nowhere like:
Get well soon, Demon King.
Also, I guess my prediction from the post Summerslam podcast that all the kids would be wearing Finn Balor costumes by Halloween this year won't come to pass just yet. I still think Finn Balor will go down as the best selling WWE action figure of all time. Hell, my birthday's coming up if anyone's looking for any last minute gift ideas for me.
And now for Plan B.
The news that Finn would have to vacate the title broke so late in the day that it really seemed like they were scrambling to figure out what to do about it.
Other plans would have to be altered, or shelved altogether to make room for this vacant title drama.
And the 'E handled it about as well as you would think.
First Seth Rollins came out to demand that he be given the BubbleGum Belt, because he's the most entitled guy on the roster.
Also this gif is the most perfect representation of Seth Rollins ever.
Then he was interrupted by a series of guys.
First:
SAMI ZAYN'S MUSIC HITS!
At this point, I was like THEY'RE FINALLY GOING TO REWARD SAMI FOR BEING IN LIKE SIX MATCH OF THE YEAR CANDIDATES. PUT THE BELT ON THE UNDERDOG.
And then my brain took over and I was like: That's never going to happen.
And then:
CHRIS JERICHO'S MUSIC HITS!
Hey, I like that guy, I said to myself, but not as much as I like his new tag partner...
KEVIN OWENS' MUSIC HITS!
Somehow make it so that Kevin Owens has to fight Sami Zayn for the Twizzler Title.
Please just give this to me.
ENZO & CASS' MUSIC HITS?
I'm with you, Kobe, that didn't make a ton of sense to me either.
ROMAN REIGNS MUSIC HITS!
(Seriously, fook that guy.)
They all get in the ring and start pointing and yelling at each other. Well, except for Seth Rollins:
Look at that aloof pose, that angry stare.
It's fantastic.
(by the way, I realized that I must have used the word "fantastic" to describe something good
at least 75,000 times over the course of two podcasts this past weekend,
so if any of you helpful folks want to give me some synonyms in the comments below, that would be fantastic.)
Anyway, I really appreciate how good of a heel Seth Rollins is, you guys. Like, Top Notch.
So Mick Foley and Stephanie say that everyone in the ring has a claim to be champion, which makes zero sense. 24 hours ago you thought so much of Sami Zayn, you had him in a tag match on the Pre-Show, and now you think he's Cherry Championship material? (I mean, you should think that, but your booking doesn't indicate that at all.) Jericho and Kevin Owens are doing Tag Team stuff now. Matter of fact, they just beat Enzo & Cass the night before. Wait a minute ... is ENZO included in the "everyone in the ring" remark?, because I object. Also, could anybody have just come down and asked to be part of this deal, like Jack Swagger? Sin Cara? Jinder Mahal? HEATH SLATER?
None of this makes any sense.
Then it gets worse. Mick says "we're going to have a series of matches to determine who's going to be the new champion."
A "series" of matches? What kind of "matches" will be in this "series"? They don't seem to know, because they're not telling us, and the title will be determined at Raw next week. Which immediately turns the Brooklyn crowd against them. You know as soon as they heard that Finn would be relinquishing the BubbleGum Belt they thought they'd be getting to see a new champ crowned in person. And now they're disappointed. And when wrestling fans get disappointed, they get mad. And when they get mad, they could sh*t all over everything, just because. Good idea, pissing off the post-Summerslam crowd. Way to go.
A SERIES OF MATCHES.
The first match in this SERIES OF MATCHES is Rollins vs Sami Zayn, because I was right, they don't see Zayn as a main event guy.
They appear to be aware of the internet scuttlebutt that Rollins is an unsafe worker, and injures everybody he wrestles against, so they're spinning it into one of two things or maybe both.
Either it's "Rollins intentionally tries to hurt his opponents" or "Rollins' opponents are cursed by a gypsy or something."
In this match, they tease Seth trying to Barricade Bomb Sami before he fights out of it, then Sami "injures" his "ankle" while "performing" a "springboard leapfrog." I don't know how air quotes work.
Anyway, Seth works the leg, hits a Pedigree and wins, because of course he does. Then, during a commercial, he gives this promo:
That's just fantastic terrific.
I love Seth Rollins. Love his heel work, but I don't want him to be Cherry Champ.
I want this next guy to be Cherry Champ.
Kevin Owens would be the greatest Twizzler Title holder ever.
For starters though, Neville wasn't even in the ring when Foley announced the Series of Matches. Did he point at people and yell stuff backstage or something?
Anyway, I'm glad he's out here though, since they turned this into a damn showcase match and got him away from working matches with Curtis Axel and Jobber Jihadi Mahal.
Look at this stuff:
That's all great, but check out this deadlift bridging German Suplex that he does to a man who outweighs him by about a hundred pounds:
Neville is just fantastic awesome in the ring, and I won't accept any arguments to the contrary. If he's not the anchor of your Cruiserweight Division when it starts in a month, then what are you even doing with him?
Kevin Owens wins, because there's no way they were letting Neville get a whiff of that BubbleGum Belt. As much as I like Neville, I agree with this decision.
The third match in the Series of Matches just made me angry.
Number one, it appears that Roman Reigns is never going to get his comeuppance for being a monumental dickweed to Rusev and Lana. And that fills me with rage. Like too much rage. It's bad for my blood pressure.
Also, since Roman Reigns gets to remain a babyface for some reason, even after trying to commit murder via internal bleeding to a man WHO WAS JUST TRYING TO PROTECT THE HONOR OF HIS NEW WIFE, now we have to hear Big Cass robotically explain that "I'm going to finish .... what Roman Reigns started ... and there's only one word yadda yadda I'm tall and I don't spell good."
I used to like Big Cass, but if he's friends with Roman Reigns, I'm done with him.
So the match is structured like this, Big Cass beats on the injured, taped up ribs of Rusev, which is a thing that heels do. Not babyfaces. Eventually, Rusev is so hurt, he voluntarily gets counted out. Apparently, when faced with the pain of having bruised ribs kicked and stomped, this is Rusev's response:
So Big Cass wins, and moves onto the final round of the Series of Matches, which has finally been decided by Vince in the back to be a Fatal 4-Way.
Seriously, I think they were just winging it for the first hour of Raw, and they finally figured it out.
Side Note: I really enjoy how much Corey Graves hates Enzo Amore. I love that it is unexplained, but our comments section has an idea:
Honestly, if Enzo's destiny is to be the best manager in the business, and he manages Big Cass to stardom, so be it.
I just hope they both realize what a giant bag of dicks their new best friend is.
Roman Reigns wins LOL.
Even when Kevin Owens came down to help his buddy Chris, there was never really any doubt.
He's just going to keep getting more and more chances, they're never going to turn him heel, he's going to continue to let him bully people who don't deserve it, and we're all supposed to just lie back and take it.
Sounds like fun.
The New Era everybody.
Reigns is going to win the Fatal 4-Way next week and become the new Cherry Champion.
My God, is there even a reason to watch wrestling anymore?
You better huggin' believe it.
I don't have much to say here, except I love Bayley. And if you don't, you can hug right off.
I'm apprehensive about what they're going to do with her on the main roster, but for now, just let me get misty-eyed about this girl who's not portrayed as a catty sexual object, getting a chance to shine on the biggest wrestling stage on the planet.
That's fantastic hugging WONDERFUL.
Say it ain't so.
I will miss them. Especially Bubba Ray, who was doing some of the best heeling in the business, only it was on Superstars, so nobody saw it.
Classic.
They went out on their back, giving a rub to the new top heels on the brand, because the Dudley Boys are old school cool like that.
And for those of you who still maintain this was a work:
Godspeed, Dudleyz.
And now for the rest of the show...
5 videos in the above playlist, let's take this home...
The Swiss Superman isn't Neutral anymore.
Cesaro gets a backstage fallout interview where he wonders why, if he didn't have a match with Sheamus to continue their Best of 7 SERIES OF MATCHES, then why wasn't he in one of the SERIES OF MATCHES for the vacated Twizzler Title? And you know what, he's right. Big Cass gets a singles push over Cesaro. That's just wrong.
New Day's Old Material.
I think the New Day are great, and I'm glad that Big E's business is fully functional again, but I'm kind of over the Booty-O's thing, and the Unicorn thing, and the Trombone thing.
Me from 4 months ago just showed up in a time machine to slap me across the face, but it's true.
Big E vs Karl Anderson.
Big E is just fantastic stupendous in the ring, and I hope that if the New Day holds the titles until like 2019 or something, that eventually, or maybe along the way, Big E can get a push as a singles competitor.
Johnny Knockout gets Blunt Force Murdered.
Does this guy know that the internet is forever?
Everyone made the same joke last night, but if this is truly the first LGBT character on the show, I don't think GLAAD is going to be pleased.
The Hindenburg was less of a tragic catastrophe.
OH DEAR GOD SOMEBODY GAVE TITUS O'NEIL A LIVE MIC.
Until Next Time, I've been Alex Pawlowski
and this is me watching Roman Reigns
get away with everything.
You can follow me on Twitter @pawlowskithe4th
