By Vince Russo -
I'm sorry I hate RAW and I truly mean that.
After every show, every Monday night, I find myself frustrated because I just gave three hours of my life watching a product that clearly doesn't care about it's audience . . . or . . . the audience it used to have, anyway.
It gets quite personal for me, knowing the effort that we all put in every Monday night a long, long time ago. The efforts of me, Ed Ferrara, Vince McMahon, JR, Bruce Prichard, the agents, the talent . . . we left nothing out there -- nothing. As I've stated dozens of times in the past, the lack of effort has nothing to do with the men and women who are competing in the ring. In my 25 years of experience, the majority of wrestlers always perform to their peak level, whether they are in front of 50 or 50,000 people. The lack of effort is on the creative side -- I'm sorry it's just not there and what's makes it worse -- it just seems like they don't care. Yes, I understand that the WWE is a billion dollar company, but where is the pride? Where is the pride in knowing you just wrote and produced the best show you possibly could?
Here are my high/low bullet points on the show:
* I felt they were successful in accomplishing two things in the opening Battle Royal -- Darren Young won his big return match on RAW, and it appears as if a seed was planted for an Apollo Crews vs. Baron Corbin feud.
* Nobody cared about the backstage story between Sheamus, Zack Ryder and Rusev -- nobody. I was only concerned with whether or not Zack looked up Lana's dress as she walked over him.
* The Sheamus/Ryder match was just another match with zero story. I hated Sheamus just giving Rusev the ring after his win, but I'm glad they keep putting heat on Rusev.
* Nobody cared about the cold match between the Lucha Dragons and "Breezango".
* I'm a Seth Rollins fan, but I don't like that it seems that everybody has their own talk show now. There was only one Piper's Pit, and that's why it got over. Seth "interviewing" Reigns was creative. I hated that Seth called out Ambrose then didn't accept his title match right there on the spot. Really screwed the good people of Detroit -- I don't understand that. If you're not going to do it, why tease it?
* I'm sorry, I've been seeing Sami Zayn/Kevin Owens for what feels like a year now going back to NXT. I'm just really exhausted by it. How many times are we going to see them exchange rights and lefts? They don't like each other, we get it. Please end it and move on.
* Heath Slater vs. Titus O'Neil. Another cold match with no story that nobody cared about.
* Wyatts/New Day would have been great had we not seen TNA's Final Deletion just 6 days ago. Watching this, you felt like it was a blatant rip-off. Nonetheless, the best segment on the show by far. Any attempt to be "different" is always a winner by me.
* Good spot with Cena in Enzo/Big Cass vs. Anderson/Gallows match. Refreshing to see how over Enzo/Cass are with the crowd. They're over with the audience because they care about them. They're characters, not just "wrestlers". Huge kudos to Big Cass and Enzo for getting themselves over with no help by way of storylines from WWE Creative.
* Dana Brooke has looked awful in the ring, and I usually don't say that about anybody. At what point did she think it was better to choke her opponent in the corner with her FEET as opposed to her hands? Absolutely ridiculous.
* The grand finale. Who's commissioner of what, and who are the GMs? Unfortunately, talking about the change in the last 5 months since Shane-O-Mac's return made us all realize how there has been no change at all. Everything has just been the same old, same old. This dialogue couldn't have gotten much worse. I don't know where you go from, "I'm going to make you wish you were ever born."
Sorry guys, I call it like I see it. That's the way I saw this week's show.
There's always next week.
