WWE RAW Report (September 29, 2014): No Brock Lesnar, no problem

Dammit, Joey turn around! Photo credit: WWE.com

Noble Mercury: The buddy cop show you never knew you wanted.

Watching Jamie Noble and Joey Mercury bumble around for the first hour of RAW in failed attempts to hunt down Dean Ambrose just cracked me up.

I mean, they went everywhere looking for Dean, including the ladies locker room because Noble Mercury will leave no stone unturned and no concession stand hot dog uneaten. Ambrose even calls back to the throw away hot dog line later in the night when he opened his promo saying he waved at the duo while at the concession stand.

It’s simple comedy, but it is so well set up and even these filler promos get me to chuckle in the end.

Is the Intercontinental Title the new TV Title?

I hope it is because I am completely on board if we get great matches like this triple threat between Dolph Ziggler, Cesaro, and the Miz every week. Plus, it removes the aggravation of watching a title swap immediately after a PPV and it also removes the hated non-title loss.

Personally, I’m quite fond of the days I spent watching WCW growing up and watching the TV Title defended practically every week. There’s something cool about knowing that there is at least one belt that can for sure suddenly change hands on a weekly basis. It’s also part of the reason I loved the Hardcore Title as well during the Attitude Era. Titles have heat and fans will always react to their changing of hands and defenses.

The final bonus: the storylines are incredibly simple. Just take a look at this match as a perfect example. We know Miz and Dolph have a beef, but now Cesaro has to be all kinds of pissed that Ziggler basically stole his victory after uppercutting Miz into Lake Michigan. And it isn’t a heel move by Ziggler either, but rather a slick move by a scrappy champion that had the odds stacked against him in this match.

So yeah, let’s make the new TV Title a thing and not go back to non-title losses for the next few weeks. This is a lot more fun.

Luke Harper set free?

Color me intrigued. I have absolutely no idea what to think of this new development within the Wyatt Family but am cautiously optimistic of the new layers this can give both Bray and Luke.

Sorry, WWE, Natalya is not a sympathetic character.

Well, here’s the obligatory weekly promotional match and segment for Total Divas that is completely terrible. The biggest problem here is not Rosa Mendez attempting to wrestle Layla and it’s not even the outside the rings shinanegans going on with Tyson Kid and Nattie, but the fact that the WWE is trying to sell Nattie as a sympathetic character.

I do not watch Total Divas, but I do read the recaps of the episodes to stay current on what’s going one because the show’s storylines now blend with what appears on RAW. As an aside, bless the poor souls that write about that show because I cannot imagine subjecting myself to a show that has apparently gone full kayfabe and over-the-top in manufactured drama.

I mention that because, having read these recaps, I know Nattie is a terrible human being in these shows. So despite RAW’s best efforts to try to paint her as a babyface, I know that is incredible laughable when she throws Summer Rae out of her car in the middle of nowhere for no good reason. Sure, her husband has been a jerk, but when you consider the way both of them act equally awful, you don’t feel bad for Natalya in that situation at all.

And that even bleeds into the WWE Universe. Just last week, Nattie was backstage at NXT begging for her husband to get yet another title shot over two very deserving stars in Sami Zayn and Tyler Breeze for no other reason than Tyson Kidd is her husband and he can do it, I swear! I’m not joking, that’s exactly what she told Regal.

So there’s a huge disconnect here. Natalya is terrible so I don’t care about the ringside drama. The match inside the ring is terrible so I don’t care about the match. None of this makes me want to watch Total Divas. Why are we doing this again?