Hey there PCU-Maniacs

Time for more 5 thoughts from Raw. This week for the Raw that Aired April 13^th 2015.

This week’s Monday Night Raw was a strange one to write about because most of the writing about it was done yesterday. You see yesterday’s Raw emanated from London, England and due to time zone shenanigans, technically happened at 3pm eastern. This means when we saw it on TV, it was pre-recorded and many people had already written their columns based on fan reports. I didn’t; get a chance to watch until this morning on my DVR. Sorry for the late column.

Without further ado here are my thoughts:

1) ANOTHER great week for the Cena challenge. The last two weeks we’ve had great wrestling matches but this week we had a brutal FIGHT. Cena and Barrett beat the living hell out of each other in that match. And even after sucking up to the English crowd, the crowd was hardcore anti-Cena. (Oh and John, the WWE hasn’t done a major PPV in England in 13 years. I’m pretty sure it would even be a stretch to get them to do a WWE network exclusive at this point… so stop saying we need Wrestlemania, please.) The stipulation for Cena’s rematch with Rusev is an interesting one. Much more than what seems to be to the inevitable tables match with Harper/Ambrose and I would guess a stretcher match with Regins/ Big Show. Chain matches just aren’t done very often and given that Cena used to call his fans “The Chain Gang” it is something they might play up. I am looking forward to this one.

2) The DIVAS. Quite a twist from WWE as everyone had seen the rise of Naomi and was expecting her to get the W in this one. But instead they put Paige over (I guess they wanted at least one English person to win in England) which lead to a beat down and subsequent heel turn from Naomi. I’m guessing with Paige off to film a Christmas film with Miz soon, they might work an injury angle and thus put Naomi in the title match anyways. I like that the WWE turned Naomi into a heel. She’s been a baby face for her entire run so far and she is mainly just seen as an Uso arm candy by most people. Since the Bellas and the other Funkadactyl (whatever her name is) are the only 100% heel people in the Division, perhaps it’s a show of starting to draw some lines in the sand.

3) The Running through line of the Kane/Rollins angle was fantastic! Absolutely brilliant! This is going to be interesting to see how it plays out long term. From Kane getting advice from the Big Show, then from his old tag partner D-bry. Not to mention the match itself. The WWE have done a great job of making Rollins a beatable champ, the slithering heel. We’ve had “Dominant” champs for too long. And something really subtle here that not many people caught was that one Chokeslam from Kane was enough to just put him out. This is another way of showing Rollins as a beatable Champ and it builds Randy Orton as a threat because if one Chokeslam is enough, then what is Randy going to do? And what the hell is the F5 going to do? Good subtle storytelling.

4) Okay so that ending? What the hell was that? It felt like a mid-card angle should have happened before the match that I am going to talk about next. The stipulations are going to have some impact and everyone is talking the RKO being banned. I love that they call the RKO his greatest weapon. Everyone forgot about the Punt. I want to see Seth’s head sailing through the uprights. That punt was his greatest weapon as the RKO was just his usual weapon. The issue is we’re probably not going to see the punt 1) because it’s a heel move and 2) I forsee Seth winning, which he can’t do without a head. The steel cage is going to be a nice change of pace and has a very “I’m not trapped in here with you, you are trapped in here with me” vibe for Orton. Oh and Seth’s “I’m trying not to show I’m scared” reaction was great.

5) Ziggler vs. Adrian Neville or just Neville. Again a great match. But do you know why they are using top tier talents to wrestle Neville in order to get him over? Because the moment he picks up a microphone he’s dead. His microphone skills make Roman Reigns (who seemed a lot better this week) look like the Rock. He got over in NXT because of his talent, because with that crowd it’s about in ring skills, but his microphone presence is just bad. He’s just not a great talker. Perhaps they can team him up with a manager to do his talking to avoid him becoming just another Evan Bourne. But the future looks promising! Then again Curtis Axel debuted with 2 wins over Triple H and one over Cena but look what happened to him.

So there you have it PCU maniacs, my thoughts from this week’s Raw. No match went longer than about 10 minutes on a 3 hours show and we had a WEAK promo as our main event. Thankfully the matches we DID have were pretty good (divas battle royal not withstanding) so let’s start the wrap up shall we?

The Top 3 stars of this week’s show

1) Dolph Ziggler

2) Bad News Barrett

3) Kane

(I cannot in good conscience put Neville on the list 2 weeks in a row until he picks up a microphone)

Anyway, please leave your thoughts and comments below, on our facebook or twitter, or tweet me @BobTGoldfish to discuss your thoughts. Until next week

See you in the Squared Circle

Ben Taylor.