RAW Takes It Easy this Week....

 How’s It Going, Enthusiasts?

So, some stuff went down over the weekend. It’s nothing devastating. We mostly knew AEW was having their WrestleDream PPV and the headline was “retiring Bryan Danielson aka Daniel Bryan”. Did that happen? Yes and no. I didn’t watch the whole thing but I caught a couple matches just to see how they’re doing and of course, I have some notes. Wanna hear ‘em? Here they come.

So, in the Realm of AEW, it looks like Will Osprey, Ricochet and Konosuke Takashita took the top spot for Match of the Night. I don’t need to take a look to believe that but I did find that Willow Nightingale and Mariah May had the 2nd spot so, I just had to take a look to see if it warranted the attention.

Well, it’s not like the action we’d see from WWE Ladies but it was executed in earnest and that all-outedness earned them a great deal of endearment. They may not want to hear it but the display came off as real cute and I mean that in the best way. They may not be the most skilled practitioners but they were invested and presented themselves well so, take the points you got. 

Both of them have their own sense of appeal, though I was able to gather that Nightingale was the Face and that May was the “nasty mean heel” but you wouldn’t really come to that conclusion to look at them. It looked like a PowerPuff Girls Match without the superpowers. It was adorable in its own right which is probably why it was popular. It was a couple of cute ladies going for it. I wouldn’t recommend them for WWE poaching just yet but let’s just see how they develop. Perhaps in the future.

So, that leaves the 3rd most favored match in the form of the grand finale as Jon Moxley aka Dean Ambrose sent Bryan Danielson/Daniel Bryan into “retirement”. Well, I didn’t have a problem with the match itself. If I didn’t know better, it seemed like they went for comedy a little early. I couldn’t help but laugh when Mox “took a bite” out of Danielson’s shoulder. Guess it’s just to sell “the crazy” but besides that, Mox just beat the shit out of our man Bryan and towards the end, Danielson just seemed beat, as in tired, ready for a nap. So, rightly so, Mox put him to sleep. 

Then, it just got stupid and that’s why this didn’t get higher approval ratings. I warned them about going too far and backing themselves into a corner. They doubled down on trying to “suffocate” Danielson to “prove a point” and Wheeler Yuta proved spineless and did the deed. 

What is the point of “killing” Danielson? I get he may be sent off to get neck surgery and what have you but why does he have to “die”? I understand it’s supposed to be a Heel move but it’s too far and therefore ridiculous. No one should be “dying” at these things. It’s never been and never should be that serious. Prime directive is to have a great time at these events. Put on a show. Have a spectacle but don’t try to “kill people”. How is that fun?

Then it’s Danielson of all people, beloved by all, so how do you justify killing him. What juicy video does Mox have on him that paints Danielson as a cunning manipulator who has us all fooled? What I'm getting at is that there's a line with this stuff. Cross it and it's no longer believable and all the lead up gets rendered null and void.

Keep the action within the general construct of pro-wrestling. Go for "carnage"! I think Drew McIntyre and CM Punk are the current standards. Mox should have put Danielson through like, 7 tables. Zip-tied him to a ring post and beat him with a kendo stick until it broke then went and got another one. Pull out some straps after that and give him bunch of lashings. You see? Kill him not kill him.

Moxley and Company gave themselves the task of making palatable sense of this. It’s not impossible but not a fan of the hole they dug for themselves. Going too far only leads to eyerolls. How do you keep the Crowd’s interest and the intensity up if the Crowd doesn’t buy it? We’ll see how they dig themselves out in the coming weeks I suppose. 

I’ll also just toss in that Yuta should guard against being too much of a stereotype. Asian men are often portrayed as submissive and prone to breaking under social pressure in Western media so I hope he’s leaning more on youth in deciding to side with BCC. He should reinforce his backbone wherever he can going forward.

An interesting tidbit, however, is that word is Danielson has been working without a contract of late and technically could show up wherever a promotion would have him at any time. Naturally, I’m thinking of a WWE part-time stint to close out his wrestling years but that doesn’t have to happen any time soon. Let him rest up. Get that surgery if it is to be and take it from there. In the end, I’ll always be fine with whatever keeps the man happy.

And so, that brings us back to the WWE Universe. We have pre-taped action tonight as much of the roster is on a European Tour. Sounds like they’ll be back stateside for SmackDown but we’ll see. We can expect to see The Miz solidify his 405th Heel Turn against R-Truth. Kofi Kingston will see if he can slow down the steamrolling Bron Breakker. Damage CTRL 2.0 wil see if they can re-snag the Tag Team Titles off of Bianca Belair and Jade Cargill. And GUNTHER and Cody Rhodes will have a proper tête à tête without the typical privacy. 

Unofficial Watch Party will happen at 8pm PDT as usual. I DVR this stuff so it’s technically always pre-taped for me. Feel free to join in if this too is nothing new for you.

See You in a Bit,

-Nicole Alexis (^_~)