WWE Raw, SmackDown takeaways: Do the muscle man dance

Monday Night Raw and SmackDown Live this week began to look beyond Friday and toward Stomping Grounds in late June. Here’s what’s notable from WWE’s main-roster programming this week.

We have finally reached the month of June, which means that show in June will finally get out of the way this Friday. Much of what happened on Monday Night Raw and SmackDown Live was performed in service of it, but we also got an inkling of what’s ahead with Stomping Grounds down the pike on June 23.

Still. there wasn’t much wrestling to be had this week, with six matches total — four on Raw and two on SmackDown, not counting 24/7 Championship shenanigans — which means WWE killed time mostly with exposition and non-match beatdowns. Let’s get into it.

The Beast bides his time

Last week, Brock Lesnar learned for the first time that the Money in the Bank contract doesn’t have to be cashed in right away or when WWE or anyone demands it — he can do so at any time in the coming 12 months. Armed with this knowledge, he left Universal Champion Seth Rollins twisting in the wind, begging for Lesnar to exercise his right in order to get the inevitable over with and Lesnar denying him.

Apparently, this didn’t sit well with WWE brass, despite this being the inherent feature of the Money in the Bank contract. Claiming “disrespect,” they demanded Lesnar cash in on Raw against Rollins, to which Lesnar’s advocate, Paul Heyman, obliged.

The match was not to be, however. Rollins twice — first on Miz TV and later in the show — demanded his match with Lesnar. While the opportunity presented itself by way of Baron Corbin laying Rollins out, making him easy pickings for The Beast, Lesnar had other, more sinister plans.

Lesnar proceeds to brutalize Rollins with numerous chair shots, suplexes and an F5 on the outside of the ring. At any point, Lesnar could have cashed in — Heyman was certainly goading him on — but instead, he just wanted to send a reminder to Rollins: That this can happen at any time, and that it may or may not result in a cash-in. While Lesnar claims that he will indeed be cashing in on Friday at that show in June, the rules say he doesn’t have to there, or anywhere, until next May at the latest.

This menacing of Rollins should continue throughout the summer. Why not? There are few scarier Superstars than Lesnar, and few scarier scenarios than being the man with Lesnar’s target on his back. There are few more threatening gimmicks in the company than the Money in the Bank contract. Putting the three together makes for a truly terrifying conceit. Why not milk it, because, for once, it makes logical sense.

A very special episode

After two weeks of relatively truncated episodes of Bray Wyatt’s Firefly Fun House, we got “a very special episode” on Monday Night Raw. The theme: Exercise. But it may as well be “exorcise,” given the presence of one particular demon and what he represented.

Wyatt introduced us to a new character, Huskis (or Huskus) the Pig Boy, who needs Wyatt’s assistance to get in shape or else a demon Vince McMahon will fire him. This is a direct call back to Wyatt’s days as “Husky Harris” in NXT and the rumor that McMahon wasn’t happy with Wyatt’s/Harris’ actual conditioning and body type.

Wyatt gets Huskis in shape by showing him how to do “The Muscle Man Dance,” which, of course, featured its own creepy-hilarious music video and the brilliant refrain of, “pull up your pants and do the muscle man dance.” It was very “LT Slide Electric Glide.”

Women in the merry-go-round

With women not part of that show in June, both Raw and SmackDown women’s divisions have been essentially in a holding pattern, with Lacey Evans, Bayley, Charlotte Flair and Becky Lynch all kind of circling one another and Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross leading up the secondary action. Carmella has been around, but mostly to be R-Truth’s partner-in-crime as Truth keeps running for his life while holding the 24/7 Championship.

The women kept going round-and-round this week, but the orbit got wider, with Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville and the IIconics making appearances in addition to the seven above. Still, things didn’t get much more deeply developed.

The Wild Card rule was the primary factor in this week’s women’s division developments. Flair showed up on Raw to have a deeply-flawed match with Evans that Lynch ended by getting involved. Bliss, meanwhile, showed up on SmackDown, first to host A Moment of Bliss with guest Bayley and then to be inserted into a three-woman match to determine Bayley’s opponent at Stomping Grounds.

Bliss wins, despite being a Raw Superstar, and will challenge Bayley for the SmackDown Women’s Championship on June 23. Meanwhile, it’s safe to assume Lynch will be defending her Raw title against Evans and SmackDown‘s Flair. The IIconics only served as losers this week, with Peyton Royce being pinned by Cross in a match where a cup of coffee was the biggest star, Asuka and Kairi Sane remain off camera, Superstars like Ember Moon and Natalya don’t warrant inclusion in multi-woman No. 1 contenders matches and Deville and Rose are just … there.

WWE could have used the extended time between Money in the Bank and Stomping Grounds to build more complex, longer-building storylines for the women’s division. Instead, they have opted to freeze things mostly in place. At least Bayley has something tangible to work with now that Bliss is her next challenger, but the Bliss-is-on-Raw aspect of things makes it less compelling. Let’s just officially call off the brand split; all of this stuff would be 20 percent more enjoyable and make 35 percent more sense.

Championship updates

As announced last week, Rey Mysterio showed up on Raw to relinquish his United States Championship due to his shoulder injury (and to him not actually having pinned Samoa Joe). He does what Joe asks and gives the belt directly to him, but there’s no way that Joe will match an honorable deed in kind. Instead, he chokes out Mysterio, which means that this feud will remain simmering until Mysterio can return to the ring.

In 24/7 Championship news, R-Truth had a relaxing golf outing with Carmella interrupted by Jinder Mahal (in full wrestling gear) over the weekend, in which Mahal beat Truth and held the 24/7 title before Truth quickly won it back. On Monday, Truth was revealed to have been hiding under the ring, only revealed because he was lying on a table that Cesaro had pulled out from under the apron. Though Truth and Carmella were under pursuit again, the pair managed to escape.

SmackDown is where things got inevitably confusing. Truth and Carmella received a phone call from Shane McMahon saying that Truth would be in a traditional championship match, albeit a lumberjack match. While 24/7 rules would be suspended for the duration of the match, immediately when it ends they would be reinstated, thus exposing the winner of the match to a dozen low-card Superstars who have been seeking the title.

Truth faces Elias and loses, and the lumberjacks predictably hit the ring. Elias rolls out, unnoticed, but runs into Truth. The two — plus a referee — go under the ring and a few seconds later, Truth emerges as 24/7 Champion once again. He and Carmella escape and the title goes back to social media for a few days. Again: R-Truth is a national treasure and is the only thing about the 24/7 Championship that is not only interesting, but vital.

Odds and ends

• Ricochet and Cesaro met for a third time, with Ricochet coming out on top and besting Cesaro twice in the series. Cesaro attacked Ricochet after the match, an indication their storyline will continue — a good sign, given that this is essentially the best wrestling that the WWE is giving us, and not just because we’re getting such a low dose of it of late.

• Two matches have been built for Stomping Grounds — the aforementioned Bliss-Bayley match for the SmackDown Women’s Championship and Drew McIntyre vs. Roman Reigns, which will likely remain Shane McMahon-adjacent. Fun fact: Shane McMahon has appeared on every WWE pay-per-view this year.
• Can someone please take up Aleister Black on his open challenge soon? The man is too good to be stuck in the dark promo closet much longer (or at all).
• Kofi Kingston should be WWE Champion forever.

• Yes, The Undertaker and Bill Goldberg were there, as was Lars Sullivan. Moving on.
• It’s really easy to type “Shame McMahon” when you really mean “Shane.”

So that wraps things up for this week’s look back at WWE Monday Night Raw and SmackDown Live. Now that we’re just about to get past some weird show that is supposed to be equivalent to WrestleMania — an insult to WrestleMania, so good job on burying your flagship annual event, WWE — maybe business can pick up ahead of Stomping Grounds and late-summer’s SummerSlam.

A girl can dream.