Who won Raw vs Smackdown 8th & 9th august 2016

Alright, before we start I have to write about last week’s scores. As you may know by now, in this blog I review Raw and Smackdown on a weekly bases and score the shows 1 point according to my opinion, and another point according to yours. In the first week Raw was the clear winner, winning 2 point from myself and all you guys. Last week I gave my point to Raw, but you guys disagreed. Therefore, the scores with which we enter this week are 3 points for Raw and 1 point for Smackdown. Will this week be different? Will there be a clear winner? Who will win this week’s battle of the brands?


Raw started off with an Enzo & Cass and Jericho and Kevin owens (KO2J, if you will) segment for the second week in a row setting up a tag team match at Summerslam. Although, I’m hoping for a big push for Kevin Owens, he and Jericho (JeriKO, if you will) have been gold together, especially with Chris’s character these past months. Smackdown had an okay opening with Ambrose and Ziggler getting into a fight with the Wyatt family (which apparently consists of two members these days) setting up for a very predictable tag team main event. Nothing creative here. Instead I’d rather watch a supposed third Wyatt family member throw a guy out of the ring by the leg.


Raw continued with a very strong promo by Seth Rollins dissecting Finn Balor’s persona. Seth looked strong here and ready to be the first “Universal” champion. He’s my pick for Summerslam, although Finn has a lot of momentum. Seth’s promo hurt Finn Balor’s video message later on in the show where Finn sounded a little crazy trying to convince Seth (and everybody else) of old myths and legends. At one point Finn said: “What about the monsters, Seth?” as if that is a valid argument now. Seth was going to beat you at Summerslam, but I guess he didn’t bear in mind the monsters? And yeah, I understand his Demon side, and I’m looking forward to it, but Finn did sound kinda silly. And not having a match two weeks in a row after debuting three weeks ago won’t help Finn’s credibility either.



Smackdown was mainly focused on tag team and women’s matches, which I all enjoyed. I did keep thinking why Shane and Daniel Bryan haven’t already introduced tag team and women’s titles for Smackdown yet. They’re both called divisions (so where are the prizes) and specially the segment where American Alpha was surrounded by all the Smackdown tag teams had me wondering what these tag teams are fighting for. Why would they all come out there to confront American Alpha? Of course they’re leading up to a tag team contest of some sort (possibly at Summerslam) for the brand new titles, but in kayfabe it made no sense whatsoever.


Smackdown went on to tell the story of Orton versus Lesnar, a match which has supposedly been in the making for 15 years. Just because they haven’t fought in 15 years, doesn’t mean it had been in the making. There was no story during those 15 years, so basically nothing was being made or in the making. Orton had a “vintage Orton” match against Alberto Del Rio (which isn’t a good thing, because vintage also means predictable in this case). It was decent, but nothing special. Later on there was another promo for a match “10 years in the making” (what’s with all these matches in the making?) between Cena and A.J. Styles. It is a rematch of the match at Money in the Bank, so I guess it a match “1 month in the making” or whatever. Anyway, both superstars didn’t appear on the show which was a shame, but understandable because of Smackdown’s length.



Back to Raw. I’m split on Rusev versus Reigns. A part of me wants to dislike Reigns and cheer for Rusev because, well… It’s Roman Reigns the mic-skill-lacking, repetitive-move-set-packing, arrogant “guy” we’ve all learnt to dislike. But the WWE have done a masterful job at getting me sold on this match. The tediously long and boring wedding segment had even me calling for Roman (though I regretted it as soon as he started talking). So now Roman’s being cheered. You win this time, WWE. If you’d only gone with this route back when Cena faced Rusev for the US title, no one would’ve booed Reigns and he’d be ready for a legit title run right about now. Rusev is a good opponent for Roman. He’s proven to be a strong and steady worker. Because of that I hope that Rusev retains the title at Summerslam. Raw also ended on Reigns and Rusev with an awkward looking spear which Rusev saw coming from a mile away but didn’t attempt to dodge. It reminded me of the steamroller scene from Austin Powers.



The only thing I really disliked about Raw was the confrontation between Daniel Bryan and Mick Foley. Throughout the entire show they announced that the Raw and Smackdown GM’s were going to exchange words about the whole Lesnar and Orton invading each other’s shows. By the way, when they showed footage of Lesnar attacking Orton on Smackdown it read in big giant letters “Courtesy of WWE.com” as if WWE Raw doesn’t have the rights to use WWE Smackdown footage. Anyway, so Daniel Bryan finally came on, exchanged compliments with Mick Foley, and before they could actually discuss anything about the invading of the shows they were interrupted by Rusev. Then Cesaro came out, asking for a title match against Rusev and got it. This is how the main event of Raw was determined by Mick Foley? Really, Mick? You had no main event, so you went with Cesaro versus Rusev (which had a predictable outcome because Reigns versus Rusev was announced moments ago) on the spot? And what about Daniel Bryan? He came all the way to Raw to be a lead in for a match that had nothing to do with him, Smackdown or Lesnar versus Orton?



Overall I enjoyed Raw more than Smackdown this week. Raw had a couple of great matches, both of Cesaro’s matches were awesome (he even makes Shaemus look good), and Raw has the better story-lines at the moment. Smackdown wasn’t bad, but too mediocre and uneventful to beat Raw this week. So my pick for this week is Raw, bringing the scores to 4 points for Raw against 1 for Smackdown in week three. You can decide where the second point goes to. Will you give Raw a bigger lead or did Smackdown earn your point?



Thanks for reading, guys.Let me know what your thoughts are on this week’s shows and how you liked my review. I’ll be back next week with a new “Who Won?” Raw vs Smackdown review. In the meantime, check me out on twitter wrestlingshorts and on youtube Wrestling Shorts.



Kind regards,



Ash



wrestlingshorts.tumblr.com