WWE Raw, Smackdown takeaways: Let’s go home

In five hours of WWE programming, a lot can happen. Here are the top takeaways from Monday Night Raw and SmackDown Live this week as we go home to Fastlane this Sunday.

This week’s episodes of WWE’s Monday Night Raw and SmackDown Live served as the go-home shows for the Fastlane pay-per-view and also help set the table for Sunday night’s events, given that there were only four scheduled matches for Fastlane heading into the company’s two flagship programs.

At the same time, both shows needed to serve the bigger master — WrestleMania — which means that a lot happened but yet also nothing happened. Stories were advanced, but only so much, and only strategically. Thus, five hours of programming produced just six major talking points.

And new…

This week, we saw a title change, with Samoa Joe winning the United States Championship on SmackDown Live in a fatal four-way match born of then-champion R. Truth’s latest open challenge for the belt. Joe answered the challenge first but, like last week, Rey Mysterio Jr. also came out to answer and was followed by Andrade. The four-way bout seemed in one sense to favor Truth retaining, given that Mysterio and Andrade could spend their time preoccupied with one another and then Truth using that to gain a pin on one of them, granted he could neutralize Joe.

But neutralizing Joe is easier said than done. While it was true that Mysterio and Andrade were spending their energies on one another, Andrade’s manager, Zelina Vega, took out Truth with a hurricanrana, allowing Joe to break up a Mysterio pin attempt on Andrade and get the pin on Andrade himself.

This, remarkably, is Joe’s first WWE main-roster title reign, an honor he’s long deserved given his years of excellent in-ring work, his believable and natural delivery on the microphone and a captivating overall presence.

While it would have been nice — and extremely entertaining — for Truth to continue to hold the U.S. title into and through WrestleMania (perhaps to face his “childhood hero” John Cena, the creator of the U.S. Championship Open Challenge), it now appears that Joe could be headed on a WrestleMania collision course with Cena. Whatever happens, please don’t take Truth away from us now.

The circuitous route to WrestleMania

In January, Becky Lynch won the Women’s Royal Rumble, thus allowing her to head to WrestleMania for a main event title match. She chose Raw Women’s Champion Ronda Rousey as her opponent, despite Lynch being assigned to the SmackDown brand. Meanwhile, fellow SmackDown Superstar Charlotte Flair had outstanding business with both Rousey and Lynch, dating back to last year.

While it’s obvious that the WWE needed to “and-something-something” in order to add Flair to the Lynch-Rousey match, the way they have chosen to do so has been tedious. And it’s unfortunate, given that the Lynch-Rousey-Flair dynamic is the one connecting with crowds and viewers the most. We’re just lucky that the tedium hasn’t affected fans’ investment in this story.

Last week, Rousey begged Stephanie McMahon to reverse Lynch’s suspension and add her back into the match at WrestleMania. When McMahon refused, Rousey left the Raw Women’s Championship in the ring and walked away. The next night on SmackDown, Flair took the move to mean Rousey is relinquishing the title and said she would come to Raw the following week to claim it. Thus, this Monday, McMahon announced that Lynch’s suspension would be lifted and that she would face Flair at Fastlane on Sunday for the vacant championship, granted that Lynch signs a hold-harmless agreement, as Lynch is still dealing with a knee injury.

Lynch arrives at the end of the show to sign the agreement, in the ring, with McMahon and Flair. This, unsurprisingly, draws out Rousey, who says she never gave up her championship. McMahon hands it right back and then decides that Sunday’s bout between Flair and Lynch now has something else at stake: If Lynch beats Flair, she gets inserted into the WrestleMania match, thereby making it a triple threat.

There’s no need for this to be so complicated. Yes, WWE needed to script a way for Flair to be part of the match, but the choice they selected to tell this story has so many unnecessary bells and whistles attached. Lynch won the Rumble and has earned the right to compete at WrestleMania, end of story. Why remove her from the match, suspend her, un-suspend her and then ask her to compete at Fastlane for a spot in a match that she has already earned? None of this part of the story has to happen to get to the Flair’s-in-the-match-now-too part of the story.

Anyway. All of this stuff seems to have pushed Rousey to her breaking point, because Monday’s events were all put in place for her heel turn, which should have been her default setting since her arrival a yeThe ar ago. Rousey takes out her aggression on Lynch (and after the social media confrontations between the two, it’s clear to see why she’s the champion’s primary target), while Flair stays out of it, preferring apparently to get her beating at a later date.

So, that’s something: Rousey’s the bad guy because she’s mean and angry (which works), Flair’s the bad guy because she’s an entitled brat with a bad attitude and Lynch is the aggressive fan-favorite with a chip on her shoulder and who now has the biggest target on her back despite Rousey being the only champion among them. All three of them hate each other and the fans are given more reason to back Lynch.

Regardless, the weirdest part about this story happens the following night when Flair invites Lynch to SmackDown for a “friendly chat.” Invited. To SmackDown. Hey, Flair, while you’ve surely been spending a lot of time at Raw, given that’s what belt Rousey holds, both you and Lynch are technically SmackDown Superstars. Lynch showing up to work at the place where she works: shocking.

Oh, and Flair beats up Lynch there, too, before Lynch ends the night with the upper hand (by way of Dis Arm Her).

The Shield reunites

With the return of Roman Reigns and the apparent imminent departure of Dean Ambrose, it comes as no surprise that WWE would like to get The Shield back together for a short-term reunion. It all began last week when Reigns and Seth Rollins made the save when Ambrose was the victim of a four-on-one beatdown. Reigns then opened this week’s Raw requesting that he, Rollins and Ambrose get back together while they still can. Rollins eventually agreed, leaving the two men to go on a quest to bring Ambrose back into the fold. These attempts are nearly as entertaining as their eventual payoff.

Reigns confronts Ambrose in a boiler room — the place The Shield used to congregate years ago — and tells him that there are more comfortable accommodations elsewhere in the building, such as the locker room. Rollins, later on, tries to appeal to Ambrose’s emotional side, telling him that Ambrose is his “wrestling soul mate,” always and forever.

But it is ultimately a sense of brotherly duty and a love of violence that finally convinces Ambrose that the three of them together are stronger than each of them individually. Ambrose returns to the ring to even the odds after Baron Corbin, Drew McIntyre and Bobby Lashley attack Reigns and Rollins and the reunion, complete with tri-fists, is on. The Shield will be in action at Fastlane, by the way, taking on — yes — Corbin, McIntyre and Lashley.

Other notes: Triple H gets personal, Raw tag team match made, making sense of Kevin Owens vs. Daniel Bryan

Triple H has decided to take personally Batista’s beating of Ric Flair last week on Raw and has vowed to give Batista what he wants, though it’s unclear whether or not H’s demand to see Batista face-to-face somewhere, anywhere is to fight or to find out what Batista’s desiring. While it’s very safe to assume that this is all building to H and Batista squaring off at WrestleMania, this was a meandering, confusing promo that centered around how furious he is about Batista ruining a celebration not for Flair, the character, but for Richard Fliehr, the human being.

This was all in response to an Instagram post by Batista intended to provoke Triple H and one that has nothing really to do with the attack on Flair the previous week (apparently just done to get Triple H’s attention). Instead, Batista just states that he’ll speak to Triple H on his own time, to “play the game by my rules,” and, also to make it clear what he’s implying, to play said game until the game is over. The Game. Ended. We all get it, no? Well, Batista’s back and he wants to beat up Hunter.

Also on Raw, Aleister Black and Ricochet were awarded a Tag Team Championship shot against The Revival for having been called up two weeks prior and winning all their matches. This was interrupted by former tag champs Bobby Roode and Chad Gable. Their interference causes a disqualification and now all three teams will meet in a triple threat match for The Revival’s belts at Fastlane. So, uh, hey: We have another match for Sunday. Also, if Black and Ricochet can both be Raw title contenders and a team in the NXT Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic, then why can’t Raw or SmackDown teams be part of the Dusty Classic? Alas, who knew that a search for logic and reason could be ultimately so silly.

Meanwhile, on SmackDown, WWE Champion (The New) Daniel Bryan finally broke his silence regarding his Fastlane opponent, Kevin Owens (who replaced Kofi Kingston at the dictum of Vince McMahon). It’s all kind of … odd. Bryan runs down Owens for looking and thinking like the fans in the stands and hits the “Planet’s Champion” and “martyr” talking points. Owens responds by saying that while he sat home recovering from knee surgeries, he was disgusted by Bryan’s disrespect for the company and its (shiny gold, leather-strapped) championship. Bryan hits him with a few weight-related jokes and notes that Owens has no friends, a point hammered home later on when Owens faced Bryan’s second, Rowan, and he and Bryan turn it into a two-on-one attack on Owens.

This seemed like the perfect time for Owens’ longtime foil/foe/friend Sami Zayn to make his return from his pair of surgeries, given that he’s expected back at any time. The crowd in attendance certainly did, chanting Zayn’s name. Instead, though, Owens was assisted by Mustafa Ali, who is back from the concussion he sustained last month.

It’s good — no, it’s great — to see Ali back and part of a prominent storyline, but the motivation is weird. Ali has no real reason to align with Owens, given Owens hadn’t yet returned when Ali hit the sideline and the two have no history. All they have is the same general alignment — face — while Bryan and Rowan are the heels. Sure, Owens took the spot that was Kingston’s, and that spot only became Kingston’s because of Ali’s injury, so in that sense all these men are linked. But that’s about it. WWE should have just done the natural thing and put Zayn in this situation and not Ali

And those are the main takeaways from five hours of television just days before the final pay-per-view before WrestleMania. That’s not a lot of story-driving content. Things, though, should pick up post-Fastlane and one of those had better be The Miz remaining the face when he and Shane McMahon (probably) split on Sunday. Let us know your thoughts on this week’s Raw and SmackDown in the comments.