Raw, SmackDown takeaways: Ready the ladders

The build to WWE’s Money in the Bank continues, with the event’s titular matchups now in place and more singles feuds advanced on this week’s episodes of Monday Night Raw and SmackDown Live.

Five hours of WWE main-roster television programming a week is a lot. It’s always been a lot, but the weight of those hours can become burdensome when the WWE is not on top of its creative game. And that has been the case in the weeks since one of the most-compelling (and yet overlong) WrestleManias in company history.

Is it any wonder that the company is hitting new lows in viewership for both Monday Night Raw and SmackDown Live (the latter of which had a 23 percent drop in viewership from last week to this)? All the positive momentum and good will that WWE had built up over the past few months — most of it organically generated by the fans’ support of Kofi Kingston and Becky Lynch, specifically — has gone down the drain in the aftermath of WrestleMania.

The Superstar Shake-Up, an annual event that is supposed to, yanno, shake up the company in order to start new storylines for the upcoming year, has been mostly a mess, with wrestlers jumping brands and back again or being shuffled off to red or blue for no reason weeks after the two-night event was supposedly resolved. Things are supposed to be new, but yet it still feels like everything is stale.

Anyway. Let’s slog on.

Money in the Bank ladder matches made

With three-plus weeks until the next pay-per-view, Money in the Bank, the WWE had the chance to fill the time with qualifying matches for the women’s and men’s ladder matches. The old qualifier format was so effective because it managed to explain why the disparate entrants into these matches are there. There’s always a couple of heels, a couple of faces, a couple of ongoing feuds, a couple of folks who are only in the match because they will deliver insane spots with the myriad ladders. It’s a way to get fans to understand why people are in the matches for reasons other than “because.”

And while this year we do have our requisite heels in the ladder matches, faces in the ladder matches, ongoing feuds in the ladder matches and folks who are in the matches because we want to see what they do with all those ladders, they are all there simply “because.”

For the men’s match, we have Braun Strowman, Ricochet, Drew McIntyre and Baron Corbin on the Raw side, and Finn Balor, (Mustafa) Ali, Andrade and Randy Orton joining the fray from SmackDown. For the women, Raw Superstars Natalya, Dana Brooke, Alexa Bliss and Naomi are joined by SmackDown‘s Bayley, Ember Moon, Mandy Rose and Carmella. Okay, great.

This week has already seen two tag matches (Strowman and Ricochet vs. McIntyre and Corbin on Raw and Ali and Balor vs. Orton and Andrade on SmackDown) and a singles match (Bliss and her borrowed shoes that won’t stay tied vs. Naomi) come from this, and one can only expect this will be the course of action for all 16 of these Superstars in the lead-up to MITB. You know, more of the same-old, same-old during shows that would be well-served to instead use time on qualifiers for the ladder matches and thus build fans’ interest in them. This, though, would make sense. The WWE thinks otherwise.

The best thing this week

The best thing that happened on main-roster WWE programming this week was episode 2 of Bray Wyatt’s “Firefly Fun House,” (much as it was last week). Wyatt introduced us to another puppet character in his world, Rambling Rabbit, and Wyatt let us into his psyche by way of his paintings, particularly one depicting Sister Abigail being burned alive in a house in the woods. Needless to say, Abby the Witch was not pleased. But hey — how can you please a sociopath?

Sociopath, coincidentally, was our “word of the week.”

It feels inevitable that this gets ruined down the line; we’ve seen so many false-starts out of Wyatt over his main-roster career (and so many other things we’ve loved turn to turds by this company) that it’s hard to maintain much hope. So, let’s enjoy this while it lasts.

The curious thing is how this will start translating to in-ring. How does this set up a feud for Wyatt? It’s the same question with Sami Zayn — how do these things go from Point A (where they are now) to Point B (a wrestling match)?

Anyhow, these three-and-a-half minutes spent with Wyatt was definitely the highlight of the week.

And now a bad thing …

The Hardy Boyz showed up on SmackDown this week to relinquish the SmackDown Tag Team Championships that they won from The Usos at WrestleMania and haven’t yet defended. The reason? Jeff Hardy’s right knee needs a full reconstruction. The storyline is that the attack by Lars Sullivan a week ago finally wiped out Jeff’s already-ailing knee, which does at least help further establish the monstrous persona they are trying to advance with Sullivan and, perhaps, gives something Matt Hardy to briefly focus on now that he’s back to singles competition.

What this means for the SmackDown tag titles is anyone’s guess. With Money in the Bank in a few weeks, perhaps the belts will just be hung above the ring and four teams can have a ladder match for the straps. Or maybe we’ll get a tournament over the remaining SmacksDown before MITB, and the final two teams will have a match at the pay-per-view to crown the new champion. Maybe there’s a third, terrible option we haven’t even thought of yet.

Shane-o Two-Shows?

From the same people who brought us “Five Baron Corbin segments in three hours,” it’s “Shane McMahon has two different storylines on two different shows now!” The dad-puncher (who doesn’t want his dad punched) is now continuing the dad-punch-adjacentness on both SmackDown and Raw. The latter? Because that’s the new home of The Miz, the guy we all assumed McMahon had shipped from blue to red during the Shake-Up in order to be rid of him thanks to all that stuff McMahon had said about and done to Miz’s dad.

Guess not, because McMahon showed up on Raw this week to interrupt a match between The Miz and Bobby Lashley (itself born of Lashley making fun of Miz’s dad) and beat down his nemesis, then returned to SmackDown the following night to punish Roman Reigns for punching Vince McMahon by placing him in a two-on-one handicap match against the B-Team (and featuring Elias as special referee-enforcer).

Anyway, the younger, redder-faced McMahon will face The Miz in a steel cage match at Money in the Bank, which means McMahon is going flying off of that thing (and maybe onto Miz’s dad?). Did we need this much dad-centric content? This much Shane McMahon content?

The Kevin Owens-New Day thing

While the WWE obviously needed a foe for Kofi Kingston while former champ Daniel Bryan dealt with an undisclosed injury and Kevin Owens is a fantastic choice for such a role, the way the Owens-New Day beef was presented on SmackDown this week was a bit odd.

The show opened with Kingston explaining why, despite a remarkable amount of evidence, he and Xavier Woods gave Owens a chance to prove he’s a changed and better man and how he recognizes it was a mistake. It turns into Kingston giving Owens a shot at the WWE Championship at Money in the Bank. Owens comes out, accepts it, insults Kingston, which draws out Woods, who attacks Owens.

Later in the night, it’s announced that, for some reason, Woods is slated to be the guest on The Kevin Owens Show. Woods, understandably, doesn’t show up, so Owens mocks him and Big E by mocking their action figures (sigh). This draws out Kingston — in a very effective way, to be honest, with no music, no fanfare, just Kingston’s pure intensity — and the two men brawl to close the show.

The KO Show conceit really wasn’t necessary, particularly the Woods-is-the-guest part nor that whole bit with the action figures. Mostly all we needed was the opening segment between Owens and Kingston which set up the championship match. The second segment did provide us with quiet-rage Kingston, which is a very good look for him, but accomplished nothing particularly useful otherwise.

Other notes

Now Raw has the good tag team division? As the Shake-Up has proved never-ending, Monday Night Raw now can count The Club on their roster. Now, Raw‘s tag division boasts Gallows and Anderson, The Usos, The Viking … Raiders and The Revival (plus, uh, the champions, Curt Hawkins and Zack Ryder). Putting aside The Usos “revealing footage” of Dash Wilder shaving Scott Dawson’s back — something that’s not really all that funny nor shocking (because back-shaving is kind of part of the job for most of these guys and friendship is awesome). Regardless of The Revival’s continued burial, this is a pretty stacked division and something good should come out of it.

Samoa Joe-Rey Mysterio feud continues: Rey Mysterio got retribution for his quick WrestleMania loss to Samoa Joe on Raw this week, picking up a win over Joe and celebrating with his son, Dominic. This feud seems like it only exists for the inevitable Joe-Dominic interaction, for we know (based on what happened last year with AJ Styles) that Joe likes to terrorize his foes’ families. And Dominic might be well-equipped to handle a little wrestling-adjacent personal trauma.

Bayley vs. Becky Lynch: For the first time ever (on SmackDown), Bayley faced Becky Lynch. Luckily for both women, the requisite Charlotte Flair beatdown came after the match had ended, which allowed Lynch to get a clean, tap-out victory with the Dis-Arm-Her. No, it wasn’t a Bayley win, but the WWE powers-that-be gave her a full match and didn’t have the challenger beat the champion in a non-title contest as they love so much. Is this progress?

And that wraps up the most notable moments from this week’s iterations of Raw and SmackDown? Was it as interminable for you? Anything else stand out? Let us know in the comments below.