The five biggest takeaways from and a look back at the Feb. 29 episode of WWE RAW
WWE RAW was live from Nashville, TN on Monday, Feb. 29 for the first ever RAW on Leap Day. With three matches near the top of the WrestleMania 32 card already set last week, the prospect of more to come and more excitement for this week on RAW was certainly there. Unfortunately, things largely fell a bit flat.
There’s often a lot of complaining about RAW being three hours too long, even if WWE isn’t really the one at fault for that (looking at you, USA Network). However, it’s nights like this where the writers, bookers, and talent all feels like they are mailing in their performances and waiting to get onto a bigger, better, more smart-marky crowd next week that those problems are most evident.
Rather than run down the entire episode, though, these are just the big moments that you need to know—the five big takeaways in regards to best and worst matches, biggest winner and loser, and the best moment of the night. For the full RAW rundown, click here.
Now onto the five biggest takeaways from the Feb. 29 episode of WWE RAW.
Best Match of the Night
New Day vs. Y2AJ
There was actually a decent amount of wrestling on this show, which is a positive thing. The problem is that there were also several really quick, relatively pointless squash matches that were largely just abysmal to watch and made the show feel even longer than most other nights whether the show is good or bad.
Luckily, though, New Day, AJ Styles, and Chris Jericho got to shine for a little bit and it was highly enjoyable. Not only are all four of the superstars in this match a pleasure to watch in the ring, but the chemistry between Jericho and Styles as a new tag team is shockingly good. Moreover, we get another go-round of this match next week, that one being for the tag titles. Thank God for this match or else everyone watching might’ve slipped into a deep depression.
Worst Match of the Night
Dolph Ziggler vs. The Miz
There were far too many terrible matches on the WWE RAW card on Monday night, but this one was the worst for a number of reasons. For one, I sincerely have no idea what the point in it was other than the fact that one is a face and the other is a heel and they had a chance interaction backstage. Secondly, there’s the match itself.
If you’re going to start a midcard feud with Ziggler and The Miz, let them have a good, long-ish match with one another where Miz winds up stealing the win. Having Dolph get 1.5 minutes of offense in before Miz rolls him up serves nobody well and leaves none of the fans caring about what happened going forward. It says a lot negatively that this was the worst match on an overall bad show.
Biggest Winner
Anyone who skipped RAW or is catching the Hulu version later
I normally hate to be wholly pessimistic about the WWE product and find the good things that are there to find. But this show was so incredibly mailed in by everyone in WWE—even The Undertaker who appeared to say approximately 10 words and then walk away—that anyone who watched it would’ve been better off waiting until the last 15 minutes and then flipping on the TV.
Yes, there are some interesting things happening, but to put forth a show like this with just over a month remaining until WrestleMania 32 is completely asinine on the part of the company and ultimately a terrible move when fan support isn’t exactly at an all-time high for WWE.
Biggest Loser
Bray Wyatt
There were plenty of superstars who didn’t have great nights on WWE RAW, but to see where they are with Bray Wyatt right now as a company is just completely depressing. This guy once looked like he was going to be the biggest heel in the company for the next decade and, quite honestly, he has the talent to be.
But after poor booking after poor booking—among other things by not actually developing a full story with Bray—Wyatt has been reduced to a mildly creepy character that gets 30 seconds on a pre-taped vignette to say stuff in the camera that doesn’t really mean anything at all and holds almost no weight anymore. It’s just unreal how much they’ve dropped the ball and nights like tonight only depressingly bang that point home further.
Best Moment
Setting Up a mini Ambrose-Triple H feud
For all of the crappy things that happened on the Feb. 29 episode of RAW, the best moment has to be the final segment with Triple H giving Dean Ambrose a shot at the WWE World Heavyweight Championship before WrestleMania. Not only does it put Ambrose in the spotlight with Roman out, but it makes the buildup to Mania so much less painstaking than merely having Authority promos to build to the main event of the biggest pay-per-view of the year.
Not only is there this mini feud, but Ambrose has been over enough with the crowd that there is at least a slight possibility that plans could be fluctuating for the WrestleMania 32 main event. They could potentially have Roman come back as heel to Dean having won the title off of Triple H or a number of other possibilities. It’s just a quality wrinkle to help compensate for a feud and storyline that was dead in the water going into Mania.