WWE Monday Night Raw recap: Don’t boove me

WWE Monday Night Raw hailed from Manchester, England this week but the NXT attack on the red brand continued.

Like Friday Night SmackDown, this week’s WWE Monday Night Raw was pre-taped last week in Manchester, England. Thus, the results spoilers have been on the interwebs for days. Going into the show, we knew it wasn’t going to be a barn-burner and, well, it wasn’t. Here, however, is what did happen.

A women’s tag title match

Even though Charlotte Flair and Natalya beat The Kabuki Warriors in non-title action last week, this week it was Flair and Becky Lynch to get the title shot at Asuka and Kairi Sane’s WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship, with Natalya not around for personal reasons.

This was a competitive match that ended — as so many matches do — with a distraction finish. NXT Women’s Champion Shanya Baszler posted up at ringside and after Flair, who endured most of the punishment in the match, tagged in Lynch, Baszler’s presence led to Lynch paying her too much attention. Asuka got the pin, and then SmackDown Women’s Champion Bayley arrived to attack Lynch. Baszler bailed out through the crowd.

Clearly, this was meant to increase the tension ahead of Bayley, Baszler and Lynch’s non-title match at Survivor Series and (potentially) line up Asuka as a challenger for Lynch’s Raw Women’s Championship after the Nov. 24 event. We all know that matches and outcomes like this are plenty during the weeks ahead of Survivor Series, but the rote nature of the whole thing made it fall flat. It was surprising, though, to see Flair get so thoroughly dominated. Who knew she’d be a midcarder for a while.

A weird Erick Rowan promo

This weird promo was then followed by a match in which Rowan squashed local talent but, most importantly, brought his little cage covered in burlap with him to the ring. Clearly, he has a creepy new pet whom he loves. The easy guess is that it’s a rat, but maybe it’s a possum or squirrel or a tarantula or something. Anyway, he beats Soner Durson swiftly.

Rowan was also seen beating up the Singh Brothers after the duo took a wrong turn while trying to evade R-Truth, who was coming after the 24/7 Championship.

These three matches

Drew McIntyre faced Sin Cara and won fairly quickly via Claymore Kick. The Viking Raiders defeated former NXT UK Tag Team Champions Flash Morgan Webster and Mark Andrews, via Viking Experience. Andrade, with Zelina Vega, came up victorious against Cedric Alexander.

The latter is notable because yet again it was Vega’s involvement (this time, interference that distracted Alexander enough for him to essentially walk into Andrade’s hammerlock DDT) which allowed Andrade to win easily.

Is there going to be some kind of payoff to this? We’ve seen Vega assist Andrade for wins in the past, but now it’s every week, which makes it seem like Andrade headed into a feud with someone who keeps pointing out that Vega is the real reason behind his winning, perhaps even leading to a potential split with Vega. Or Vega starting to point out to Andrade that she’s more important than him. Regardless of what the plan is, the extra doses of Vega’s assistance lately cannot just be coincidental, can they?

Aleister Black etc., etc.

More psychosexual drama no one asked for

Lana had an announcement — well, after a lot of oddly-cadenced exposition she did. Oh yes, Lana is pregnant. Nine weeks pregnant to be exact, while she’s only been having sex (god, did she say “sex” a lot) with Bobby Lashley for seven weeks. Which means it’s Rusev’s and she’s not about having his Machka Brat. All of this draws out Rusev.

After more nonsense, Lashley shows up to beat up Rusev and Lana reveals on the walk back up the ramp that she was just lying to Rusev about the pregnancy because … reasons? We’ve already spent too much time thinking about this. Let’s move on.

Monday Night Rollins

After being courted last week by Triple H to return to NXT, Seth Rollins reconfirmed this week that Monday Night Raw is indeed his home. After some typical Rollins rah-rah directed at the NXT invaders in support of his red brand at Survivor Series (and met with significant disapproval from the Manchester audience per those who were there; WWE really cleaned this up in post), WALTER and Imperium arrived to let Rollins know that he’s not safe from NXT though he’s in the UK.

Rollins and WALTER have a match, thus, but it is quickly a DQ mess when Imperium get involved on WALTER’s behalf. This draws out The Street Profits to make the save for Rollins and then Kevin Owens to even the numbers. After a commercial break, this is — surprise! — made into an eight-man tag match.

Anyway, Imperium lose when Alexander Wolfe is pinned by Rollins following a Stomp, making this a rather anticlimactic battle given all the options.

Trusting the Viper

The night’s main event, pitting The O.C. against Humberto Carrillo, Ricochet and Randy Orton, of all people, got its start earlier in the night via a tense discussion between Ricochet and Orton. The two were on opposite teams at Crown Jewel, Ricochet has taken an awful lot of RKOs as of late and also they are on the same team at Survivor Series, making Ricochet understandably nervous.

But Ricochet became distracted by something else going down in the locker room — The O.C. bullying Humberto Carrillo. Ricochet stepped in and challenged the trio to a fight, which The O.C. accepted on condition that they could find a third partner. Orton decided he’d do it, and Ricochet, again, was understandably nervous. Also, it kind of seemed like Orton may have forgotten Ricochet’s name, but given his slow, deliberate speaking cadence, if he did he covered it cromulently.

Ricochet remained nervous throughout the night and even confronted Orton about the string of RKOs leading up to this unlikely partnership. He’s worried he’s going to get double-crossed and RKO’d; Orton was basically, “don’t worry about it.” Ricochet remained worried.

The match itself got a significant amount of time (and Ricochet got a significant amount of smoke piped in for his entrance for some reason), and ended with Orton hitting an RKO on AJ Styles and tagging in Carrillo. Carrillo then hit his lovely-looking moonsault on Styles for the win. Orton feinted an RKO on Ricochet and let him know that he does what he wants, when he wants, so on and so forth. Apparently, he was not interested in attacking Ricochet, or at least at that time. Snaky tension continues.

Pre-taped shows are always a bit of a letdown when it comes to WWE programming. The spoilers are out for days ahead of time, we know that the sound of the crowd is going to be manipulated and when it’s combined with a brand-wars-centric Survivor Series build, there’s only so much that can be done. This week’s Raw wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t all that good either. It was simply there, which is relatively inoffensive except it also cost us three hours of our lives. Such is the price we choose to pay, alas.

Let us know your thoughts on Raw — and what Erick Rowan’s new pet buddy might be — in the comments below.