WWE RAW Report (December 15, 2014): Brock Lesnar returns to save the show

I’m going to make this report very brief because, quite frankly, I don’t like repeating myself over and over again in these reports with the same old complaints. It’s abundantly clear that the WWE will continue to tread water and kill time as long as Monday Night Football is on the air. There are rumors that the locker room isn’t happy and the product reflects it.

We’re at the point in which I likely wouldn’t watch RAW if I didn’t write about it every week. To be frank, it’s frustrating to even write that sentence because this roster has so much talent on it. Every week, these guys and gals could make NXT look like child’s play, but instead looked handcuffed by mediocre-at-best booking and are now hearing “N-X-T” chants while stale matches bore the live audience.

I’m still hopeful that, with football season winding down and the Road to Wrestlemania soon underway, things can turn a corner. Something needs to change.

But hey, the entire three hours wasn’t a waste because we got BROCK LESNAR:

I don’t even care that his return was booked as a heel playing babyface to save his friend (also a heel) from being bullied by the babyface guest GM, Chris Jericho. Brock was on TV, looked like a million bucks, and destroyed someone. I need this on my wrestling show right now.

Five Takeaways from the Night

1) Seth Rollins and John Cena deserve some kind of “workrate that saves bad programming” award.

After having a tables match the night before that killed all kinds time, Rollins and Cena were back out on RAW for a cage match that took up most of the final hour of RAW. This affair was a lot better than the overbooked mess at TLC, but, if I’m being perfectly honest and objective, these two saved both TLC and RAW from being complete disasters.

Take their matches away from both shows and TLC is left with a great opening ladder match, decent divas match, and a TV exploding in Dean Ambrose’s face, while RAW is just three hours of uninspired programming with Brock F5’ing Jericho.

My worry right now is that with the entire product spiraling downward, fans really aren’t appreciating what they’re getting here, myself included. I didn’t even realize I got lost in this match and enjoyed it until I started thinking about this post and that’s a damn shame.

2) The opening promo segment was 23 minutes long.

Almost half of the first hour was used for pointless mic time. This happens nearly every week and it’s getting old. There is absolutely no reason that it should take so long to get to wrestling on a wrestling show. Even Vince McMahon’s “this is sports entertainment” argument doesn’t work here. Get to the actual “sport”.