WWE Week in Review: RAW stumbles, SmackDown shines

A look back at the week that was in WWE with in-depth reviews of Monday Night RAW, SmackDown Live, 205 Live and NXT. 

The road to WrestleMania 33 — and NXT: Takeover as well — continued in WWE this week with some great segments, some really awful segments, some good matches, some bad matches and just about everything else in between. Once again, I’ve got to give the edge this week to SmackDown Live over Monday Night RAW, which stumbled a bit on their go-home episode leading into Sunday night’s Fastlane pay-per-view. 205 Live was decent enough but still needs more attention from the brass and NXT had not one but two title matches this week.

So we got a little bit of everything from WWE over the last few days so let’s get into it, starting with the flagship.

WWE Monday Night RAW

With WWE Fastlane right around the corner, it was go-home show time on RAW this week and Goldberg is kicking things off. He cuts his normal promo (snooze) and Kevin Owens expectedly comes out for a rebuttal. Owens was solid as always — minus the initial botch anyway — and runs down the list of guys he’s beaten since his arrival in WWE, mentions Jericho only briefly and proceeds to tell Goldberg he’s next. Goldberg wants a fight but KO says that Green Bay doesn’t deserve to see him in action and that’s it. Pretty weak opener overall.

While I’m hoping that Owens gets to do something on Sunday, it’s not looking likely. Jericho is likely to come out before the match even starts to distract his former best friend and that will probably lead to a spear, a jackhammer and a title change to set up Vince’s dream main event at WrestleMania. Owens will look for revenge to set up his match with Jericho and that will be that. Ugh.

Promo time continues with the hosts of WrestleMania, The New Day, who are out to talk more ice cream — still clearly a knock at CM Punk — and announce a match with The Shining Stars. Primo and Epico make their way to the ring but The New Day get their obligatory Oscars joke in and tell them that they’re not facing them tonight and that they instead have to face Big Show later on. They pull out an envelope saying that they’re facing Rusev and Jinder Mahal and that match gets underway, which essentially just becomes a filler contest. The match wasn’t terrible and The New Day got the win as some dissension is teased between Rusev and Jinder but does anybody really care at this point? Not a strong start this week.

Enzo and Cass are in the back, and as usual, Enzo won’t shut his mouth. He talks about winning the tag titles but Big Cass FINALLY shuts him up and tells him that Gallows and Anderson have won titles all over the world and that they themselves have never won anything. I’m just going to keep saying it until it happens. Cass needs to get away from Enzo as soon as possible.

Talky time continues with Cesaro and Sheamus talking backstage before being interrupted by Samoa Joe. He runs down Cesaro a bit and the Swiss Superman doesn’t like it. He fires back at Joe by telling him he’s a backstabber and does nothing but hold Triple H’s jockstrap. Now we’re getting somewhere.

Stephanie runs down Mick Foley and has gone back to being a full-blown heel, which is much better for everybody. She’s so good at what she does, and despite a lot of people not wanting her around, she’s long been one of the best characters on TV.

Finally, we’re back in the ring as Akira Tozawa is set to take on Noam Dar and this match went about as expected. Tozawa is getting a nice push and in an average overall match, he looked pretty solid. He got the victory after a few minutes but was then attacked by Brian Kendrick afterwards, who asked the youngster if he was learning his lesson. I’ve been enjoying this storyline and the payoff match should be very entertaining.

Foley is shown once again in the back and he looks so sad after what Stephanie did to him earlier. Samoa Joe comes in and asks him if he’s having a nice day (nice touch) and Foley calls him Triple H’s puppet. Joe says that nobody tells him what to do but Foley says that as long as he’s general manager, he will tell him what to do and he’s got a match against Cesaro. Nice.

Charlotte is out to talk next — and has Dana Brooke with her — but at least she’s one that I can’t stand listening to. She’s one of the best heels in the business right now and she pulls the instant heel card in Green Bay by running down Brett Favre, calling him a one-hit wonder and says that Bayley is just that as well. Not shockingly, Bayley comes down to argue back and brings up that she’s beaten Charlotte three times now. Bayley is just so awful on the microphone but goes on anyway. She says she’s glad she kept the title and she’s continuing her list of dreams, the next one being walking into WrestleMania as champion. Charlotte says that won’t happen and she even bought Bayley’s dad a ticket (great heel move) for Fastlane so he can watch his daughter’s dreams get crushed. Sasha Banks comes out to stick up for her friend but Charlotte gets a nice dig in on her as well and says The Boss continues to try and steal Bayley’s spotlight. Sasha wants a match and Charlotte is happy to oblige but Dana Brooke isn’t her partner. Was anybody else thinking of Val Kilmer in Tombstone about this time? Oh, I’m sorry, Dana, I forgot you were there. You may go now. Dana’s out, Nia Jax is in.

These are likely the four women who will represent the red brand at WrestleMania, and while this wasn’t the greatest match in the world, it was a solid showing. Sasha took some punishment early on before making the hot tag to Bayley but in the end, it was Nia Jax continuing her streak of dominance. She caught Bayley off the top rope and slammed her onto Sasha to pick up the victory. Her time as champ is coming.

Braun Strowman is in the back with Foley and he wants a contract signing to ensure that Roman Reigns doesn’t flake out of their match at Fastlane. Foley tells him that he can have that but not to blame him if things go haywire. What? Things never go haywire at a contract signing. Italics is the closest thing to writing in sarcastic font, don’t you think?

Luke Gallows battled Big Cass next, and much to their credit, creative keeps finding new ways to make the The Club look worse. I was really looking forward to this match and it was atrocious. Gallows took a beating in this quick kickfest and Big Cass got the win here ahead of their title match on Sunday. But hey, at least it wasn’t Roman Reigns beating them down again.

It’s filler match time as Titus O’Neil and Sheamus are set for action. Apparently, they had gotten into it earlier in the day and needed to sort some things out. Titus attacked Sheamus before the match even got going but then was embarrassed in about 20 seconds. Okay then.

Corey Graves, who continues to be fantastic in everything he does, is in the ring to interview Seth Rollins and I really dug this segment. Graves asked him about his knee and Rollins said that the tear was a little worse than he thought and it didn’t look like the doctors would clear him for WrestleMania. He says that it sucks but maybe he deserves this. He brings up what he did two years ago in winning the title for the first time but in some brilliant character development, he wonders if what he did to get there, i.e. joining The Authority, was worth it. This was extremely well done. That’s how you tell a story.

Triple H is out to interrupt — Joe was out there as well — and he was on his game as well (pun completely intended). He runs down Seth and runs down the crowd — a few of which deserved it for trying to hijack the segment — and tells Rollins that while he may have once been the future of WWE, he’s now just a washed-up superstar that got chewed up and spit out. He continues by telling him not to show up to WrestleMania because if he does, it will be the last thing he ever does in a WWE ring. But Rollins says he WILL be in Orlando and if that’s the last thing he ever does, then it will be the last thing Triple H ever does as well. Okay, the last line could’ve used a little work but this was still a fantastic segment.

Big Show vs. The Shining Stars is next and this was another filler and a squash from the get-go. Show won and that was that. Is Shaq happening? Is it not? Because if it’s not, then they need to find something better for Mr. Wight to do because he’s looking really good right now.

This is my impression of WWE creative discussing the next match. Okay, we know that nobody is watching 205 Live so we really need to hype up the upcoming WWE Cruiserweight Championship match between Neville and Jack Gallagher here on RAW what to do with the cruiserweights at WrestleMania to get people excited. Oh, I know. Let’s book them in a two-minute tag match. What a joke. If the division ends up being axed, just look back on this one as the kickstarter. They can’t shine if you don’t give them any time. But please, book more matches like Titus and Sheamus and Big Show and The Shining Stars. I still like my idea for but given what’s happening right now, that doesn’t look very likely. Just awful.

Sasha and Bayley are in the back and Banks tells her buddy that she’ll be at ringside for the title match on Sunday and Stephanie breaks in and asks if she’s trying to steal the spotlight. She books Sasha in a match against Nia for Fastlane. If that Fatal 4-Way doesn’t happen, could we please get Stephanie vs. Sasha in The Boss vs. The Real Boss kind of deal?

Cesaro and Samoa Joe are up next and this is the match of the night but that wasn’t too hard given the quality we got this week. But I actually did enjoy this one. Cesaro continues to impress — that standing suplex was excellent — but given the fact that they’re trying to build up Joe, the outcome of this was really never in doubt. Joe got himself a quality win here and Cesaro looked good as well. Really no harm done. Charley interviewed Joe afterwards and Sami Zayn snuck in for an attack to build up their match on Sunday. Good segment altogether.

The contract signing is going to close the live show and Braun is out first with Foley. Strowman reiterates what Stephanie said earlier but Foley shows a little life and gets right in the big man’s face, telling him that he will respect him as a legend. Hmmmm, this could get interesting. Braun wants to go but Roman Reigns’ music hits and we get the obligatory brawl. Reigns signs the contract to end the show. Meh.

Outside of the Rollins segment, nothing was great about this show. There were a few decent segments but this was a very lackluster go-home episode. Hopefully the pay-per-view is

a little

much better than this. But hey, at least Beth Phoenix is going into the WWE Hall of Fame.