It's the go home show as well as the homecoming of Minnesota's own Beast, Brock Lesnar. What should've been an exciting show was simply nothing more than a hype machine. Literally. All of the matches were just teases on what to expect this Sunday, so basically everyone that has a match this Sunday is fighting or confronting their respective opponents tonight. There are now 10 matches confirmed for the 4-hour Summerslam. Oh boy.
HHH and Steph opened up RAW! and they were in "Best for Business" mode, as they talked about Summerslam being so big that it had to be 4 hours. And you can get it all on the WWE Network for - wait for it - $9.99. What made it irritating was that they were blasting the official theme song for Summerslam, which was Demi Lovato's single "Cool For The Summer" as they were talking. Another big big news they wanted to talk about was that former Daily Show host, Jon Stewart, will be hosting Summerslam. The road to Summerslam kicked off with Randy Orton and Cesaro vs Kevin Owens and Sheamus.
The most exciting part of any matches involving Cesaro is seeing him smile at the "CESARO SECTION" signs (again, also organized on r/SC). This tag team match was... okay. All 4 of these guys have a singles match this Sunday so this team up didn't really add anything to it. There were also a few botches at the end. Cesaro almost fell over the ropes until Kevin grabbed his foot to save him, which they played off as Owens interrupting him. And then Orton was about to do his RKO on Owens but due to some miscommunication, Orton was actually following through with his RKO as Owens was pushing him off, resulting in Orton appearing to slip down. Cesaro tried to cover Owens by grabbing his leg and pulling him off the ring, leading Orton to do the RKO on Sheamus and take the pin.
Next up was Roman Reigns vs Luke Harper. Dean Ambrose showed up and went to do commentary alongside JBL, Michael Cole, and Byron Saxton. Bray Wyatt waited on ringside. It has been a LONG time since Ambrose was on commentary and he was doing a great job hyping up everyone, even Harper and Wyatt. He even grabbed Saxton's chair and gave it to Wyatt! To be honest, this match was like a fucking replay from Smackdown. Harper is so diverse and brutal with his moves while Reigns does the same power moves over and over. Everyone gripes on Ambrose's rebound clothesline but no one bitches on Reigns constantly using a clotheslines and Superman punches. Reigns won clean at the end with a weak spear on Harper. Meanwhile, everyone is talking about how they're looking forward to seeing Ambrose or Reigns turn heel on Sunday.
Becky Lynch defeated Tamina, getting another singles win under her belt. I don't have anything more to say about this match except that it seemed pretty obvious that Tamina would take the pin. And we get another reminder that Nikki Bella's reign will go on for another month until she beats AJ Lee's reign. Jesus christ.
Next up is Rusev vs Patriotic Mark Henry again but this time, eh actually defeated him with The Accolade. Lana called back Hot Summer back into the ring and challenged her. She slapped Hot Summer and then challenged Rusev to come into the ring. As Rusev edged closer to Lana, Ziggler's theme song played. Lana did a superkick to Hot Summer and Ziggler did a DDT and superkick to Rusev. Ziggler's return made him and Rusev the (hopefully) final match added to Summerslam.
Seth Rollins and The Authority arranged to have a contract signing with him and John Cena, making their title vs title match official for Summerslam. Cocky Rollins even asked if they would make a statue of him (like the ones they made of Andre The Giant, Bruno Sammartino, and Ultimate Warrior) when he wins both titles this Sunday. HHH and Stephanie agreed that it would be done IF he wins. Rollins did a long opening monologue about Cena being the disease and that he was the cure. Cena came out and basically emasculated him, saying that even though the crowd was cheering "Let's go Cena! Cena sucks!" they were not chanting for Rollins. The real champ was here. And he even called out that Rollins was becoming HHH's legacy, as HHH calmly looks on. When Cena's fired up and not being silly, damn, he can be on point with his promos. The most surprising part? Cena signed the contract and walked away unscathed.
Ryback defeated Miz while Big Show was on commentary. Big Show was promoting his movie "Vendetta" that he filmed with Dean Cain and he had JBL holding the DVD. Makes me a little worried on how Ambrose will handle promoting his movie next month. Nothing really exciting here. I'll be fine if Miz wins or Ryback retains.
I want to point out how awesome this message from Stardust and King Barrett was. What you have to understand is how long this has been building up and how it's making all the players involved, notably King Barrett and Neville, look good.
Then there was an 8 man tag team match with Prime Time Players and Lucha Dragons vs New Day and Los Matadores. The New Day was great, as usual, but otherwise it was another uninteresting match. A few months ago, that tag team division was starting to shape up after the Usos were out of the picture. There was Tyson Kidd and Cesaro, Luke Harper and Erick Rowan as "The Reapers" until Rowan got injured, The Ascension was getting some TV time, and Macho Mandow and Axelmania had... something. Ok, moving on.
The last match of the night was Sasha Banks vs Nikki Bella. One would think how awesome it was to see that the main even match was ending with Divas. Sasha was hard-hitting and taunting Nikki the whole time (even mocking her doing jumping jacks and push ups!) Unfortunately, the match went downhill when Nikki missed kicking Sasha as she jumped off the ropes (and Sasha still had to sell it), and the audience started chanting "WE WANT LESNAR!" While it was really infuriating to hear them chant that through their match, it was understandable why they would. Paul Heyman and Lesnar appeared in the last 15 minutes of a 3 hour show, whereas Undertaker appeared earlier in the first hour. This was another setback for the Divas Revolution.
Lesnar got a heroes welcome with confetti and streamers raining over him as the crowd chanted "SUPLEX CITY." Seriously, is Lesnar suppose to be the face or heel in this feud? Heyman was on fire once again as he hyped up Lesnar and mentioned his accomplishments, including from his hometown university. He even sang a glorious song, "GLORY, GLORY, BROCK LESNAR!" Undertaker's bell gong and blackout happened but Taker was nowhere to be seen, leading Heyman to do more of his promo, including pointing out that Taker doing a low blow is a desperate move (and for kayfabe reason, something only heels do, not faces). When it rang again, Taker appeared. And he did the low blow again. He tombstoned Lesnar and was greeted with a deafening boos from the fans. Anywhere else, Taker would've gotten cheers for doing this.
So, all in all, aside from a few good parts, this whole RAW was just a tease for Sunday. There's still Smack Down! this
Oh, also...
I DON'T WANT THIS BROMANCE TO END ON SUNDAY :(
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