"RESET": Monday Night RAW (4/4/16)

WrestleMania 32, for the most part, had great moments and wrestling matches with some undesirable results. As I mentioned yesterday, a lot of favorites - such as AJ Styles, The New Day, Dean Ambrose, Becky Lynch and Sasha Banks, Shane McMahon, and yes, even Triple H - lost. Post-WrestleMania RAW was anticipated to be the most important show and it certainly proved it last night. The results can be found here.

There were some major highlights:

• Shane McMahon took over RAW just for tonight, just so Vince can prove that Shane running RAW would be a disaster, which made his whole match and that HIAC spot pointless. It was, however, refreshing to have a neutral General Manager greeting the talent backstage and setting up matches.
• The League of Nations kicked out Wade Barrett for being their weakest link. All of a sudden, the Wyatt Family (sans Luke Harper) appeared and took them out. Is this a new direction for them, to slowly become babyfaces?
• Zack Ryder, who surprised the WrestleMania crowd and won the IC Ladder match, lost his IC title 24 hours later to The Miz (with former Diva and real life wife, Maryse). It was the most shocking and infuriating moment of the night, which made me recall how angry I felt when Christian lost the title to Randy Orton 2 days later.
• Roman Reigns was acting quite heel-ish and I liked it. He was not affected by the crowd booing at him and he smugly issued a challenge to anyone who wants his title. Out came Chris Jericho, AJ Styles, Kevin Owens, and Sami Zayn, who can't enter a ring without punching each other. Shane would later set the main event to be a fatal 4-way to determine a #1 contender.
• The newly created Women's Championship title had a presentation with all of the Divas Women out in the ring as Charlotte gave an unusually babyface promo about how far they've come to make this happen before taking all the credit. Natalya challenged Charlotte for the title, which means these 2 will be feuding for a bit while Becky and Sasha take on the rest of the Women's division.
• As Wredditor insider FalconArrow pointed out, a lot of NXT call-ups happened. The first was Baron Corbin, who actually won the ATGMBR at WrestleMania. He wrestled and won his first match against Dolph Ziggler (eesh, poor guy). Apollo Crews won against Tyler Breeze (ugh), and tag team favorites Enzo and Cass made their debut to take on The Dudleyz. To cap it off, NXT Tag Team Champions The VaudeVillains will also be making their main roster debut on Smack Down.
• Kevin Owens took out Sami Zayn prior to the main event. Per Shane McMahon, a new 4th contender was added, and it was none other than Cesaro. This match was exciting. Cesaro looked incredible and was fantastic in the ring. There were so many nearfalls that it made it look like anybody - excluding Jericho - could win. In the end, Styles emerged victorious. This means that Reigns will definitely be a heel by WWE's next PPV, Payback, on May 1st.

There's another thing to note here. HHH and Stephanie were absent. US Champ Kalisto and rival Ryback were absent as well. And although they were both scheduled for RAW, neither Brock Lesnar or Dean Ambrose appeared. Looking at how "full" RAW was, I guess it makes sense that they didn't have room for them.

Ambrose's absence may be explained as him trying to "recover" from his disappointingly tame match with Lesnar, but it still drew a lot of concern. WWE has once again dropped the ball on Ambrose for the 3rd straight year in a row and his WrestleMania match effectively killed his momentum. I was worried that he lost his chance to be made into a top star with credibility and he was going back to the midcard again. My coworkers offered their take: Ambrose is taking a much deserved break for carrying his feud - and for a brief moment, Roman's feud with HHH - up until WrestleMania.

I can't help but feel bad; I've been rooting for this guy to be successful and finally capture the WWE WHC for 2 years. Rollins had a lengthy title run up until his injury and Reigns is now a 3-time champ, which is ridiculous. It would be a shame to see him booked the same way as Bray Wyatt, or worse, as Ziggler. He'll be the guy to put the star over but never be a star himself. Hopefully he's on Smack Down tonight.

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On a more positive note, I went and bought tickets for WWE's Money In The Bank. I accidentally found out the pre-sale was happening today and, thanks to some nice people on r/SC, I was able to get a promo code to buy the tickets. I did tell Vince that I didn't care how expensive it was, I was going to get us floor seats. It wasn't ringside tickets but it would be the closest we've ever been to the ring for a WWE event. I'm just excited at the fact that we'll get to see Owens, Zayn, Styles, and other favorites live. Oh, and Ambrose since he freaking lives here.