I don't think he came out looking bad really.

But as I don't like him at all I hope he never gets into the main event.

Another average show to add to the collection

5.5/10 and that's being generous

i do like cass but his mike skills needs improving

Raw was embarrassingly bad last night and as I feared, the next 10 months or so is going be very long! New era? Yet we have the same shitty endings, promos and non imaginative booking.

Ambrose and Jericho seem to fighting over a plant pot or a jacket. Either way, their last match sucked and this who feud is awful.

Goldust/R-truth...really? Still going on? Does any one care..any?

Rusev losing to Sin Cara??? Honestly, I give up. Not only did he lose, Cara was pinning the monster Rusev for over 7 seconds.

Hate is a strong word but I am starting to hate Raw and how god damn boring it is every week. Why is it never changing?

I have been watching WWF/WWE since 1989. I think I am at that stage where I am about to give up. I fast forward most of Raw. I think 90% is fast forwarded. The only time I rewinded something on this mornings Raw was an advert that I hadn't seen yet.

The last PPV I watched was WM and the one before that was The Rumble. I couldn't be bothered with Payback and Fastlane.

When the footie season is over to help with costs I think I will cancel Sky Sports until it starts again and watch WWE highlights on youtube. I would of cancelled the network but some of the old stuff is quite good and I enjoy the shows in the section called Outside the ring.

I don't think the injuries have helped (Cena, Rollins, Orton, Enzo, Bray, etc) But I just dont enjoy it anymore.

I normally read what happens before I watch Raw so I know what I want to watch.

But if those people weren't injured why do you think it would be any better? They're not gonna do anything different with any of them.


For anything to change, WWE needs to want to change. It's up to them to want to do it and if you cancel Sky Sports that's one way of showing them you want change. People need to vote with their remotes. Just like in America. The ratings dictate what USA Network can charge for advertising slots, if less people are watching, they can't charge as much money, if they can't charge as much money then when the contracts need to be renewed they have grounds to offer much less money. Same over here I guess, less people watching on Sky Sports, less ad revenue for Sky, the less money they make from WWE, the less they can offer when the contracts run out.

But the WWE have changed..we are now in the new era lol. It is so exciting now!

[quote=Central cake;82357367]I have been watching WWF/WWE since 1989. I think I am at that stage where I am about to give up. I fast forward most of Raw. I think 90% is fast forwarded. The only time I rewinded something on this mornings Raw was an advert that I hadn't seen yet.
QUOTE]

I did that about a year ago and dont regret it all. Any match of interest has a highlights package on their youtube site so I watch that. If you find yourself fast forwarding it anyway this is perfect - and even then I still skip some bits!

The only thing I can say for definate that I miss is the Royal Rumble and Wrestlemania - but that is purely because they are special I know they have potential to be really good. If I read about it the next day and it is good I can then always go back and watch it somewhere after.

If you are a pure wrestling fan, you will love WWE because it is full of wrestling matches but if you are a fan of old school wrestling, basically the way wrestling was for many many years, well over 3 decades then you will be used to big men, larger than life men and they all had their own way of doing things. People miss that kind of wrestling. They miss people that are larger than life. People take offence to me talking about wrestlers now looking like regular people and they think i say that as an insult, that's the way wrestling always was, it's always been full of big characters, people that if you didn't know who they were and had never watched wrestling, to look at them you would know they were somebody, they had presence.


I think WWE lacks that. Or they might dress it up and say "star power", the WWE lacks "star power" so we need to push these young guys and make them stars. That there is wrong. What they really mean by "star power" isn't making someone a star, it's what they WISH would happen. You can't just make someone a star, you can't give someone that gift. And dare I say it, guys like John Cena and Randy Orton were some of the last bunch from that old school way of working, that came up that way and if you compare them now, they are larger than life, they LOOK like stars, they look like they belong on TV.

I still think that's why people watch wrestling on TV. They want to see the big stars. They want to see things happen, they're not gonna sit there for 3 hours every week while nothing happens.

but thats the thing its not full of wrestling matches at all, last night totaled about 51 mins of wrestling action then minus the commercial breaks and it was under 43 mins, we got 4 matches which lasted under 5 mins each, we have 2 at under 10 mins and 2 at under 11 mins., the rest was made up of god awful long promos, backstage skits and a shite load of commercial breaks.

if it wasn't for nxt i'd have given up on this stale pile of crap thats on each monday night raw and its nothing to do with PG either, its the god awful booking and the idiotic story lines.

Also can they please get rid of The Extreme Rules PPV name as it is completely out of place in the PG era.

I mean look at the card for it. 5 title matches and only one of those is a extreme rules match. A submission match or fatal 4 way is just a normal kind of match you would expect to see at other PPV's

For a PPV called Extreme Rules surely we should expect cell matches, street fights, last man standing, ladder matches. All of them on the same night.

Piss poor effort

Apparently announced for a live event in Hawaii in July.

Kevin Owens vs Brock Lesnar and John Cena ce Shinsuke Nakamura!

2 big matches there!

Hopefully the KO/Brock match is an actual match & not just Brock phoning it in & doing his suplex city rubbish.

I don't know if Brock would be able to do that to Kevin or if he would be able to wrap his arms round his belly.

As great as those matches are, they are wasting them away on yet another throw away glorified house show.

Imagine how good they would be with a proper build up and then lead it in to a ppv.

Average of 1.29m paid subs over Q1, up 39% YOY and up very very slightly from the last quarterly average of 1.24m. The quarter ended with 1.4m subs.

Not sure if this is good or not but Vince confirmed that Cena, Rollins, Orton and Wyatt will all be back in a month or so. Then he says another 13 new talents will be joining the main roster.

So in the next month we will have biggest main roster ever.

Unless they actually do the brand split and do it properly, I fear we will have even more talented wrestlers sitting backstage twiddling their toes.

Not much wrong with last nights show IMO, actually one of the better Raw's in a while. Brilliant crowd too.

Happy to see Dana finally make her main roster debut.

The Jericho/Ambrose plant/jacket stuff is pretty ridiculous but Jericho is having his best heel run in years right now, such a great heel.

Are you serious? One of the better Raw's in a while?? Brilliant crowd? Jericho having a great run?

Sorry I am laughing to much to even try to make sense of all of that

There's clearly adults out there that do love this kind of show.

Last nights show would of bored a 5 year old

Yeah, somebody having a different opinion to you is hilarious, right?

What was wrong with the crowd exactly? Hot throughout the entire night for most of what happened without needing the over the top antics/chants.

Jericho has been brilliant since he turned on Styles. Not trying to play the heel role to come across as cool and to make people want to cheer him but instead actually playing the heel role to make people want to hate him. The storyline in places has been ridiculous so far but Jericho's work on the mic and heel work in general has been his best in years.

To be perfectly honest I think they could put on an incredible show and you'd still sh*t all over it. Some people just love to do endless moaning no matter what and incredibly still continue to watch something they apparently think is awful. Personally I'm enjoying the IC Title stuff, most of the heel work from the likes of Owens, Rusev, Jericho, Vaudevillains etc, Enzo/Cas being up on the main roster along with the Vaudevillains to give it a bit of freshness, Dana moving up to the main roster and so on. A good chunk of the writing and decisions are still piss poor, but everything isn't as bad as some try to make out at times. Up to you if you think my opinion is laughable just because I didn't find one show terrible or agree with your view on it.

Maybe I'm a bit old school, but imo it all comes down to the throw it away booking and lack of characterization and how they handle it rather than preferences of physique and/or charisma. The issues range from throwing away potentially interesting matches several times a month or even a week without any build. To the match content throwing away some devastating looking moves several times within 3 - 10 minutes. Throw into that many characters on the roster being barely defined.

It's the world we live in. TV shows and movies in particular are often more quick fire than before. WWE is trying to keep up with the times, but it doesn't help at getting people over as important factors. Especially when guys like HHH, Lesnar, 'Taker, Orton etc are lurking in the background, appearing on the video game covers, working more psychology based matches, never wrestling each other on 'free' television, being booked better, not being made to look weak etc.

Take these 10 guys from the roster: Zayn, Owens, Harper, Rusev, Big E, Cesaro, Kalisto, Crews, Ryback, Neville and Stardust. They all have strengths and weaknesses, but have upsides and all have a varying appearance to each other. But they've either been barely defined or faced and jobbed to each other many times already or will have done before the end of the year. It's like there's a growing midcard mafia, who are often exposed when a silly segment pops up, The Shield guys and Wyatt, and then the valuable veterans.

The WWE template is this: midcarder or upper midcarder face off - one of then jobs clean or is pinned after some sort of distraction. They have a rematch - the other guy guy wins. Then there's the rubber match. A DQ or count out usually means the match a rematch is set, again. It's all logical to the scripted sport, but again doesn't help anybody get over as important and isn't doing enough to hold ratings up. There is also the Monday Night Wars holdover, in which every potentially important match (Orton vs. Owens, Zayn vs. Styles) is dispensed of and the upper mid-carders face off several times during the year. Rollins/Ambrose and Wyatt/Ambrose is akin to the number of times Foley/HHH and Rock/HHH were booked. Unfortunately the latter had the benefit of more creative twists and turns.

Ah a incredible show..that is something I would love to see yet I think I am in the vast majority that think Raw has been on a endless downward spiral for 2 years now. It is a 3 hour show which most people could watch in 20 minutes due to how poor it is.

Jericho is awful right now, tired and his in ring ability is lagging way behind due to his age. His match with Styles at Wrestlemaina was average and the match at Payback was just plain boring. Yet lucky us get to see them try again. In fact most of his matches against Styles were sloppy and he was showing his age quite bad.

The viewing figures don't lie, people are just not that interested any more. Who really cares about R-Truth and Goldust after plugging the shit storyline for over a month...or Jericho/Ambrose fighting over a jacket..or watching Shane/Steph become friendly after wanting to kill each other the other month..this after Shane lost his match to not gain any control.

Oh and Triple H..the guy who is the CEO and husband of Steph..who lost his belt on the biggest stage..yet decides not to do anything about losing his belt or care what is happening with the power of Raw.

I don't disagree with you. I agree no one gets over and there is moves done early on that either don't get sold or are potentially match ending moves which just get ignored and then the match usually ends in a fluke which makes every move that came before it worthless.

This is where a lot of fans today have a problem. To get someone over isn't necassarily putting them in matches. You said it yourself with creative twists and turns, the problem for me is the WWE apart from most of the matches having no inring psychology and everyone gets a win and everyone is even, they have abandoned that side of the business and that's not something that just happened in the Attitude Era, that's something that went on in wrestling for a long long time. Okay the Attitude Era might have been a bit more off the wall but wrestling always had grudge matches and managers that couldn't keep still and family fueds, promoters getting involved, issues of race, real life personal issues brought into the ring, it's always had these things which guided the feuds along but nowadays those kinds of things get washed away very quickly or if someone like me mentions them it must be soap opera and hokey and they don't seem to want anything like that and the WWE themselves don't go out of their way to do that so what you end up with are shows full of wrestling matches, not that they're bad matches but most of the time there's no reason for them to exist other than fill time.

If you have a roster of stars, people that are over, people that you can move up and down the card and you can sell the shows off of then fine, give away good matches on TV and if you've got guys that are hugely over give them a win each but when most of the roster isn't over and no one really has any winning streaks and there's no stories connecting people other than the belts then a lot of people wont watch because they will always compare it to when they first watched wrestling and when you ask many people what their first memories of wrestling was they're not just gonna talk about matches, they're gonna talk about things that happened after them and promos and angles and you don't really see that now and it's not that people are crying out for it anymore, most people seem to want this way of how the business is now.

I don't know how they fix either thing or even decide what to do first. Do you change the way you do business and change that template and try and get people over and then worry about how to connect the dots and create stories or do you create stories and twists and turns and then try and get people over? And even if they decide on what to do first do they have the talent there that can do it? Can any of the McMahons truly put their egos to the side and allow it to happen? Or will they always know whats best? It's hard to say.