It’s a little tough fitting in three hours worth of Raw every single week, so we’re going to try and take some of the weight off your shoulders and sum up the five things you need to know from this week’s episode.
So this week’s Raw was pretty stacked with content. Not only were we treated to a feature from the Hardy Compound, but also an appearance from the Universal Champion and a surprise return to face down John Cena. We surely are on the Road to WrestleMania. Raw has been riding a pretty decent wave of momentum lately, with ratings reaching highs thanks to WrestleMania season and perhaps a certain former UFC fighter who’s seemingly gone AWOL all of a sudden. Nevertheless, they’re firing on all cylinders, and here’s what they had to offer this week.
1. Brock clocked in
The running theme from the past couple of weeks was that Brock Lesnar is ducking out of his contracted appearances. The number one contender, Roman Reigns, has been extremely vocal about how the boys backstage are tired of being disrespected by Brock, who seems to take advantage of his status as Vince’s golden boy. Despite any fan’s personal feelings about Reigns, everyone can admit that this has been some of his best work on the mic. It’s turned a feud which nobody wanted to see again into something innovative and intriguing.
This week, it was taken to another level as Brock Lesnar made his presence felt. Vince McMahon promised the fans that he would be at Raw, but Roman Reigns was left temporarily suspended for his actions. In true babyface fashion, Reigns chose to ignore that suspension.
Refusing to leave, arena security and US marshals were forced to subdue Roman, but The Big Dog did Big Dog things and fought them off. It was until Reigns was handcuffed that Lesnar chose to make his entrance and deliver a flurry of German Suplexes to the helpless yard owner. It was pretty brutal and only a small dose of what’s to come in the main event of Wrestlemania.
2. Nia Jax to challenge Alexa Bliss at Wrestlemania
The still undefeated Asuka has challenged Charlotte for the Smackdown Women’s Championship. This is pretty cool. However, Alexa Bliss has been left without a challenger for Wrestlemania. This has since been resolved.
In previous episodes of Raw, Nia Jax has been broken down by the comments made by Alexa Bliss, picking on various insecurities faced by many of women in today’s society. After her count-out loss against Asuka on this week’s Raw, Alexa Bliss stormed backstage to complain about Nia’s aggressive nature, which led to GM Kurt Angle making a match between the two at Wrestlemania.
3. Kane returns to answer John Cena’s call
John Cena demanded a response from The Undertaker on this week’s Raw. He didn’t get it. Cena took this as a personal attack on him and the WWE Universe, and degraded the Deadman for reverting from his ‘godlike status’ back to that of a cowardly man. I mean, if I had formally retired, then I wouldn’t expect to have to go back to work as soon as someone mentioned my name.
Cena pleaded for a sign. Then Kane happened.
Me being a massive fan of Kane marked out for this, even though it’s only been a few weeks since we last saw the Devil’s favourite libertarian, it’s great to see him back in the ring dealing out some chokeslams.
Kane seems to be the placeholder for Taker in the build to WrestleMania and we’ll be seeing him collide with Cena on next week’s edition of Raw.
4. The Great War is OVAHHH!
The hook of this week’s episode was of course The Ultimate Deletion. The brain-child of Matt Hardy, Bray Wyatt and Jeremy Borash saw the return of many familiar faces to those who had caught The Final Deletion and their sequels over in Impact Wrestling. The feature-length skirmish was everything you would want from one of these surreal vignettes. It delved into the whimsical world of the Hardy Compound and made you laugh, made you wince and question why the hell you’re even a fan of this nonsense.
The Great War between two celestial beings concluded with Bray Wyatt being dumped into the Lake of Reincarnation, with Senor Benjamin confirming that he had in fact been deleted. What exactly does this mean for Bray Wyatt? I can’t really fathom for now. Perhaps we’ll be seeing him take an absence over WrestleMania season, which is a bit of a shame considering he’s one of their biggest characters.
In the meantime, we have Matt Hardy to book into a feud, I think it’s likely he’ll be retreating into the Andre Battle Royal for now, alongside The Revival who also confirmed their entry this week.
If you’re going to watch anything this week, make sure it’s a montage of The Ultimate Deletion.
5. Dark segment funsies
Little bit of a cheat here, but I honestly found it difficult to find something else of importance this week. After a little digging ,however, I found that Ronda Rousey had made a special appearance after the show closed. Controversy ensued last week when Rousey did not make her scheduled appearance, despite WWE making a massive statement about how she’s contracted to appear on every episode leading up to Wrestlemania.
Even though she technically didn’t appear on the broadcast, Rousey was at Raw and appeared during the dark segment.
Don’t feel like you missed out on too much, she delivered a fairly typical promo with the help of an interrupting Dana Brooke. You can probably piece together what was said.
The segment ended with Rousey delivering this pretty cool looking capture suplex, Tazz would be proud.
So that was three hours of Raw condensed for you, we’ll see you next week for another round of Monday Night shenanigans.
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