Last night's Monday Night RAW kickstarted their road to Wrestlemania. And boy, was it awkwardly paced. The results can be found here. The first hour was started off with The New Day defending their title against Alberto Del Rio and Rusev of League of Nations. The New Day retained but proceeded to get beaten down by the rest of "The Lads." This seems to signify the New Day becoming babyfaces, as they fought back valiantly against the rest of The League, and the audience was audibly booing them. This segment went on for a pretty long time but it was clear what they were trying to do here.
This was quickly followed up with Ambrose coming out to do a promo about the controversy at Roadblock. He pinned HHH but his foot was underneath the ropes, so it was overruled. The important thing about Ambrose's promo is that even though he lost, all that mattered to him was that he proved that could beat HHH. Personally, I'm upset that they dropped the controversy quickly but they had to continue his feud with Brock Lesnar and Paul Heyman. Ambrose didn't getting any ring action but he had 2 awesome segments. First, Ambrose brandished a freakin crowbar from his jacket when Lesnar started to approach him in the ring, quickly reminding the fans about their street fight. Second, Ambrose was greeted by a familiar legend, Mick Foley, in a backstage segment. Foley wanted Ambrose to take Lesnar on a journey at WrestleMania, a journey to Ambrose's dark past. He gives him a unique gift: Cactus Jack's beloved "Barbie", a barb-wired baseball bat.
Dolph Ziggler was suddenly thrust into the spotlight, with him pissing Stephanie off enough to get him a non-title match with HHH. Vince and I noticed that HHH and Ziggler did a lot of loud spot calling in their match. Anyways, HHH retained and his victory was immediately interrupted by Reigns' theme music playing. A vengeful looking Reigns (sans swat vest and walking from the ramp instead of through the audience) went berserk to get back at HHH for bouncing his pretty face unto the announcer's table last month. And judging by the reaction, this bad-ass Reigns came at the wrong time, getting boos and mixed reactions as the beatdown segment went on. This might be a step in a new direction for Reigns but he still has the tough job to win over the crowd for the next 3 weeks. It doesn't seem like he's turning heel - at least not yet.
RAW unfortunately saw another wrestler getting injured. In a freak accident, Neville suffered a fractured ankle doing a baseball slide in his match against Jericho. Being the veteran that he is, Jericho called an audible to end the match. He even had to get physical with the ref Charles Robinson to get DQd. Neville joins Bray Wyatt on the newly injured list and this is terrible timing considering how close WrestleMania is.
Overall, this was an all right episode and WWE, like Reigns, is going to have a tough road ahead of them. The normally smarky crowd of Pittsburgh quickly died out after the 2nd hour and got just as worse with Reigns' return. While anticipation for Ambrose vs Lesnar's match remained strong (even with the brief Roadblock detour), the same couldn't be said for Reigns vs HHH and Shane o Mac vs Undertaker, which turned into the most unintentionally funniest segment of the night. The Wrestlemania card is slowly shaping up to fill their 4 four timeslot.
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