Mike Reviews Shows Considered To Be Stinkers – WWE Monday Night Raw #1426 (21st September 2020)

Happy Stinky Saturday Everyone!

For those not familiar, a Stinker Review is when I look at a show with a bad reputation in order to see if that reputation is deserved or not. Monday Night Raw #1426 is rated at a staggeringly low 1.54 out of 10 over on Cage Match, so that’s a good indicator that it’s pretty rubbish show.

Held in the midst of the pandemic, with no fans in attendance, the main thing that drew my attention to this show (in addition to such a low score) is that it features RETRIBUTION, who were a Heel stable modelled on the group ANTIFA who were pushed for all of a week before WWE gave up on them.

I wasn’t watching WWE really at all during this period, but I did see clips of RETRIBUTION’s debut, where they showed up and chain sawed the ring, which I thought was a pretty striking way for a new group to show up, so I was surprised they went from that to getting jobbed out so quickly. I seem to recall that RETRIBUTION ended up basically winning every belt on my WWE Universe NXT brand in whichever 2K game they appeared in actually.

Outside of RETRIBUTION being in the Main Event, I have very little idea what to expect from this one, but surely Monday Night Raw #1426 can’t be as bad as Cage Match says? Well, let’s watch on and fight out I guess…

You can view the card for Monday Night Raw #1426 by clicking below;

https://www.cagematch.net/?id=1&nr=289067&page=3

Raw is emanating from THE THUNDERDOME on the 21st of September 2020

Calling the action are Byron Saxton, Jerry Lawler and Tom Phillips

The usual intro gets interrupted by RETRIBUTION showing up (they’re wanton vandals! WANTON!!) as they now apparently have contracts, which WWE have offered them in an effort to quell their anger somewhat. They are still here to destroy WWE though, so that tactic doesn’t appear to have worked. T-BAR looks like an imposing dude, but when I hear see and hear him growling into the mic with that mask on all I see is Bane from that Christopher Nolan Batman movie and it’s super distracting. The Hurt Business join us, as they have apparently offered their services to WWE in order to deal with RETRIBUTION, even though I think Hurt Business are supposed to be Heels, so why they’d care about taking on these masked dorks is beyond me. Hurt Business heads right down to the ring and RETRIBUTION flees, despite having superior numbers. A match seems to be made for tonight, at which point even MORE masked dudes show up for the brawl. Despite having a roughly 12 to 4 advantage, it still takes a while for RETRIBUTION to lay Hurt Business out, but they finally manage it.

La Familia Mysterio, are backstage, and they’re very proud of Dominik getting a chance to qualify for a Raw Tag Title Shot.

The Street Profits join us for guest commentary on the next match, as Byron keeps trying to make “Swag Card” happen, with little success.

Opening Match
#1 Contender Status to the RAW Tag Team Titles
Andrade and Angel Garza Vs Buddy Murphy and Seth Rollins Vs Dominik Mysterio and Humberto Carrillo

This was obviously before Dom took over an entire cellblock during his time in the pokey, as he’s a smiling babyface here. I believe he’d been feuding with Rollins due to Rollins gouging out Rey Mysterio Jr’s eye in a match. Yes, that was actually something WWE booked. Zelina Vega was apparently the manager of Andrade and Garza, but she’s kicked them to the curb after they failed her one too many times. Rollins didn’t have his catchy entrance music yet, and hr was doing the cult leader thing. Buddy apparently almost accidentally cost Rollins a match last week, which led to Rollins beating up Buddy following the match. Rollins is all chummy this week though, but Buddy is still wary.

There are enough good wrestlers in this match that it should hopefully be fun to watch. The Profits are hoping that Humberto and Dom will pick up the win here because they would be fresh opponents, which is as fair a reasoning as any. It seems like one member of each team is legal at all times, which at least does away with the “why would you tag out in one of these matches” argument that usually comes up, as you can only tag your partner and one member of your team will always be legal. Humberto and Dom get stereo dives out onto Andrade and Buddy respectively at one stage, which actually causes the audio to drop for a moment, which makes me think the Street Profits said something that needed censoring whilst they were marking out over the dive.

Dom isn’t amazing in the ring here, but for a guy with his level of experience he doesn’t look too bad, although that could be down to the fact that they’ve got him in there with some very good wrestlers who can help cover for his inefficiencies. Not surprisingly, the best wrestling in the match is when Andrade and Buddy go at it, with Buddy managing to knock Andrade down and go for the tag at one stage, only for Rollins to then walk out on his partner. Could be tough love, could be Rollins not caring about being Tag Champs, or it could just be that he has an especially tasty egg and watercress sandwich to eat backstage. You decide. Anyway, with his partner off to do whatever he needs to do, and with Humberto and Dom seemingly incapacitated from their dives earlier, Garza is able to pin the stranded Buddy and that’s enough for three.

WINNERS: ANDRADE & GARZA
RATING: **

Thoughts: This was fine. “Perfectly Cromulent” as Scott Keith would say. I found it a bit weird that all through the match they were pushing that Humberto and Dom getting the Title shot would be a fresh match and that Andrade and Garza had already had a bunch of Title shots, but then they just had Andrade and Garza win anyway. If it was just going to be rerun of a previous bout, then don’t lampshade the staleness of the match on commentary and instead have The Profits say something like they would like to wrestle Humberto and Dom, but they still would like to settle a score with Andrade and Garza, so there’s actually a reason for us to care when the latter team wins

We get clips from Raw Underground, where Braun Strowman jumped over from Smackdown and beat a bunch of people up, with Dolph Ziggler taking some wild bumps in order to get it over (yes, I’m as shocked as you that Nick Nemeth would do something like that). Dabba-Kato (I think he went on to be Commander Azeez?) faced off with Strowman, and that’ll be our big fight later on.

Omos is backstage and Shane McMahon shows up. Shane is on the KO Show next. Omos offers to give Shane some backup, but Shane says that he’ll be fine and asks Omos to guard the door to his underground fight league instead.

RETRIBUTION are backstage, and T-BAR cuts another angry promo to hype up a match with The Hurt Business later on. Apparently this will be the first time they have an official match. Why wouldn’t you save that for a pay per view?

Kevin Owens is in the ring for the Kevin Owens Show, where he welcomes formerly hated enemy Shane McMahon down to the ring for some promo time. The commentary team at least acknowledges that these two don’t like one another, but I’m guessing they’re putting that hatred aside in order for the betterment of business. El Hijo Del Vince is here to hype up the “Battle of the Behemoths” between Kato and Strowman later on. Shane brings Dabba-Kato out for the purposes of hype, so that the commentary team can be in awe over how big Kato is. If it wasn’t for a worldwide plague going on at the time it wouldn’t shock me if they went to the whole “you’ve got to come to the arenas to see just HOW big this guy is” shtick. Owens is happy that Kato is here, because he’s still mad about Kato attacking him on a previous edition of Raw Underground. Owens is going to let Kato focus on tonight, but he will fight Kato at some point, which leads to Owens slapping Kato. Braun Strowman then joins us, as I’m starting to think that Kato is the babyface and Strowman is the Heel here, but don’t hold me to that. Whilst Shane holds the two monsters back, Aleister Black shows up and attacks Owens, as I guess they were feuding at the time? Well, there was sure a lot going on there. The segment certainly wasn’t boring, I’ll give it that.

Last week, there was a big brawl between Hurt Business, Keith Lee and Drew McIntyre and RETRIBUTION.

Drew McIntyre has promo time with MAGA Charlie, and he’s not bothered about his injured jaw in the next match. Oh, and after Drew wins, he’s buying the drinks. How pleasant of him!

Retribution are beating up people backstage. This is starting to feel like one of those Vince Russo episodes of Nitro/Impact, where there’s something happening in EVERY segment and the pace is absolutely relentless. Give a segment time to breathe for goodness sake!

Match Two
Non-Title
WWE Champ Drew McIntyre Vs Keith Lee

Alright, this should be fun. Apparently Randy Orton is injured, so if Lee can win here then he’ll get an ambulance match for Drew’s belt at the next pay per view. Just plugging Lee into an already booked stipulation match against someone he doesn’t really have a heated feud with seems like kind of a waste. They keep saying that Orton isn’t cleared, so was that a shoot injury or did he test positive and they were hedging their bets? Anyway, Lee gets the better of things in the early going, sending Drew to the floor with a big cross body. Drew responds by giving Lee a suplex onto the announce table out there though as we take a break.

Back from the ads, Lee is making the comeback, and looking good doing so for the most part. The strikes have been predictably snug here, as you’d expect from two big lads slugging it out. Drew gets clocked in his injured jaw at one stage, which leaves Lee momentarily reluctant to keep battering his friend, but he gets over it and goes for a Powerbomb, only for Drew to counter that with a rana and then add a Spine Buster for two. They continue to throw bombs at one another, with Lee getting a big clothesline for two at one stage. Drew manages to slip out of another Powerbomb attempt from Lee and manages to get the Claymore Kick, but that’s Randy Orton’s cue to run in for a DQ.

WINNER BY DQ: DREW MCINTYRE
RATING: **1/2

Thoughts: If you enjoy your HOSS battles then this was good fun. Two big lads throwing down, with snug strikes and power moves you’d expect. The finish took it down a bit for me, but I guess they didn’t want Lee getting pinned yet, in which case I ponder why they booked the match to begin with

Orton attacks Drew’s jaw with a chair following the match in order to weaken him for their pay per view match on Sunday. Orton then punts Lee for good measure, just in case he happened to get over in that match at all I guess.

Back from the break, we get a Randy Orton promo, where he says he wasn’t going to miss his pay per view match and then goes over to the ambulance to talk about how he had to take a ride in this particular ambo due to Drew laying him out with three Claymore Kicks. Interestingly there are a few botched lines from Orton in this promo, which they’ve left in even though I’m guessing this was taped. The gist of Orton’s promo is that how he felt during that ambo ride is how he made all of his opponents feel when he sent them on similar rides, which reminded him of what he needs to do in order to become the WWE Champ. Orton stumbled over parts of the promo, but the general point of it was solid enough, with the idea being that Orton was in a really bad mood due to Drew laying him out and now he was going to make the Champ pay for it. Orton was still cruel and sadistic enough in his promo that he came across as a villain as well, despite him wanting revenge.

Raw Women’s Champ Asuka joins us for some promo time, but Billie Kay and Peyton Royce interrupt, leading to match being made between Asuke and Royce for later.

Match Three
#1 Contender Status to the RAW Women’s Title
Mickie James Vs Zelina Vega

James’ match with Asuka ended in controversy last week, due to the finish getting bungled, so if she wins here then she gets another Title shot. Vega slapped Asuka last week, which makes me think that she’s the most likely to win here, but it’s WWE so who knows. Vega controls things in the early going, attacking James from the bell and talking trash, but that allows James a chance to fight back, which she does with the old Moolah Era classic of the hair toss.

Vega manages to catch James in a wacky Lucha styled submission hold at one stage, but James refuses to quit and powers out of the hold in impressive fashion. Mickie James really is a darn good wrestler, but I doubt that’s an especially hot take. We get the two wrestlers trading pin attempts at one stage, which leads to Vega getting a kind of 619/Tarantula combo move on the ropes, which wasn’t applied that smoothly but looked like an interesting hold that could be developed further. Vega manages to catch James with a Back Cracker type move and that’s enough for three.

WINNER: ZELINA VEGA
RATING: *1/2

Thoughts: This was sloppy in parts, but it had good energy and they were clearly working hard, so I’ll cut it some slack

Hurt Business are beating people up backstage as well. You know, if you’re going to go to this much effort to hype this match up, then why not save it for the pay per view

Bianca Belair goes to the Performance Centre and shows up a guy who is working out. That makes her look physically impressive of course because she’s outdoing a dude, but it’s kind of jerky behaviour on her part to show up and make fun of someone whilst they’re trying to better themselves in the gym. If she were a Heel it’d be fine, but she’s supposed to be a babyface. What did that guy do to deserve being treated like that?

Earlier today, there was some bollocks with the 24/7 Title, where Akira Tozawa and his Ninja Ref ran into the water in order to get the jump on R-Truth. However, a shark shows up, causing Truth to panic and lose his belt in the water, leading to him having to go into the water to retrieve it. “Hilarity” ensues. I’m happy for Truth that he had something to do, and he was as good as someone could be with this sort of material to work with, but this still wasn’t a good segment. Oh, and apparently Tozawa got eaten by the shark from earlier, so RIP I guess.

Match Four
Cedric Alexander w/ Montel Vontavious Porter Vs Apollo Crews w/ Rick O’Shea

This should have potential to be good I think. And it’s presented by Domino’s! Alexander and MVP cut a promo prior to the match, targeting RETRIBUTION for later before Cedric brings Crews’ family into this. Apparently Alexander and Crews were aligned, but now they aren’t. Crews is wrestling Lashley at the pay per view (good look with THAT one mate) and he’s going to beat up Alexander this week to both get revenge on him and send a message to The Blaster. Crews seems to be in control as we take a break, but when we come back we see that Alexander has Crews in a hold and is working him over.

It would have been nice if they could have at least shown us a replay of some kind to explain why Alexander was in control when we came back from the ads, even if it’s just a quick clip of the cut off. I hate when wrestling companies do that. The cut off is part of the match’s story, so let us see it. Crews sells well whilst getting working over, with Alexander focusing mostly on working holds in an intense fashion. Crews eventually manages to get a desperation cross body block and makes the comeback, showing off his impressive strength and agility in the process. Alexander manages to get a TOPE SUICIDA in reply to Crews’ comeback, but he stops to jaw with Rick O’Shea and that allows Crews to get a pinning hold for three.

WINNER: APOLLO CREWS
RATING: *3/4

Thoughts: A match where the actual wrestling was fine, but the booking and editing didn’t do much for either competitor. The finish made Alexander look dumb whilst making Crews look lucky, so no one gained anything from it. If Crews getting worked over for the majority of the match and then getting a last gasp win due to his resilience is your story, then fine, that’s a perfectly decent story to tell. However, that works a lot better with Crews getting the win down to his own abilities rather than Alexander being gormless

Hurt Business leave Crews and Rick O’Shea laying following that, thus ensuring that nobody gets over, and also muddying the waters for our Main Event later on. If The Hurt Business are stepping up to rescue WWE from RETRIBUTION, then lean into it and make them babyfaces for at least the remainder of that feud. If RETRIBUTION was any other kind of stable then I don’t think it would be as big of an issue, but they are seemingly supposed to be an nWo styled company destroying level threat, in which case just turn all the people who are opposing them babyface for the time being and then switch back the alignments once the storyline is over with. And if you really don’t want to turn The Hurt Business, then select another group of wrestlers to oppose RETRIBUTION and keep Hurt Business as Heels for whatever programs you have in mind for them. This entire sequence of events did absolutely nothing for Apollo Crews, and I’d be shocked if he beat Lashley at the pay per view, so having him get a fluke win and then laying him out here was a very odd booking choice.

We head to RAW Underground for the next segment. RAW Underground was presented like a fight club that was operated by Shane McMahon, with the fights taking place seemingly in an abandoned car park somewhere and the ring having no ropes. It was seemingly loved or hated by fans with very little middle ground. Eventually they had to pull the segments because they called for quite a lot of people to be in close contact with one another and C19 cases were going through the roof at the time within WWE, so RAW Underground had to be axed. I personally didn’t hate the segments, but I also wasn’t sure if they really added anything to the show. It was kind of nice to see a change of scenery from the usual Thunderdome set up at least. Anyway, we open up with Dolph Ziggler taking on Arturo Ruas, which leads to Ruas trying to go all Eddy Gordo with some Capoeira until Ziggler uses amateur wrestling to counter it. After some faux-MMA we get Ziggler going to a Sleeper Hold for the win. Braun Strowman isn’t impressed and tells El Hijo Del Vince that he better have got some dental insurance for Dabba-Kato, as Kato is going to need it later on.

Seth Rollins joins us for some promo time in the ring, and he has an envelope with him, which contains information that suggests that Dom Mysterio is not actually Rey Mysterio Jr’s son. This brings out Los Mysterios, with Rey not really being interested in any of this, seeing as we already did this angle back in 2005. Rollins then suggests that Rey’s daughter Aaliyah is illegitimate, and we get clips of Aaliyah checking on Buddy Murphy last week, which I believe was teasing a romance angle between her and Murphy. And indeed, Aaliyah storms off when this is brought up, leading to the family chasing after her whilst Rollins does the faux serious voice about it all. This was a pretty flat segment that went on for too long and I’m not sure how many were down with the storyline direction this took things in.

Match Five
Non-Title
WWE Women’s World Tag Champs: Nia Jax and Shayna Baszler Vs Lana Rusev and Nattie Neidhart

I believe there was some sort of storyline from this period where Nia kept putting Lana through a table each week, with the idea being that it would get Lana over because reasons. In real life I think Lana was in the doghouse for advertising an energy drink or something without WWE’s permission, so they created this storyline and then had to pretend that they came up with it in order to try and get Lana over when people challenged WWE for being petty. Ruby Riott and Liv Morgan are sitting in on commentary as they’ll be getting a Title shot at the pay per view. We get what should be an Aloha-Jax at one stage, but she just no sells it and attacks Lana, which is disappointing. Baszler quickly locks in a choke on Lana following that and that’s enough for the win.

WINNERS: JAX & BASZLER
RATING: SQUASH

The Champs and Challengers have a confrontation following the match in order to set up the pay per view match. And indeed, poor Lana gets put through the announce table by Jax in order to intimidate The Riott Squad, with this supposedly being the second time that it’s happened according to the commentary team. Many more were to come for Lana. That’ll learn her.

Drew McIntyre is icing his injured jaw (I hope he got permission from his designated locker room leader first) and says he’s going to start a fight.

Aaliyah exercises her acting chops (she needs more reps) and storms off despite Rey trying to calm her down.

Back at Raw Underground, Erik from The Vikings is fighting Madcap Moss. They agree to slug it out Frye and Takayama style, with Moss eventually finishing off Erik with some punches. B-Fab tries to get a word with Dabba-Kato, and he says that Braun Strowman is getting it later on.

Match Six
Non-Title Match
RAW Women’s Champ: Asuka Vs Peyton Royce w/ Billie Kay

I miss Asuka’s old entrance music as the new one just doesn’t land the same for me. We learn that Mandy Rose will be coming to Raw soon, although I seem to recall her going to NXT at some stage as well and having a long run as Women’s Champ there, so this Raw stint couldn’t have lasted too long. Asuka gets the shine on Royce to start, with Royce taking some nice bumps for the Champ until she’s able to catch her with a weird Widow’s Peak looking move for the cut off. The heat doesn’t go on for too long and though as Asuka rallies, leading to Vega running in for the lame DQ.

WINNER BY DQ: ASUKA
RATING: N/A

Thoughts: This was too short for me to rate, but the match itself wasn’t terrible for what we got. I’m not sure why Royce couldn’t eat a clean loss to the Champ though

Buddy Murphy is talking with Aaliyah backstage and apologises if he’s done anything to hurt Aaliyah. I mean, you could stop lackeying for the man who tried to rip out her dad’s eye if you’re truly sorry. Just saying…

Back at RAW Underground; we’re finally getting the long awaited Strowman Vs Kato fight in the “War That Will Try Not To Make You Snore”. After all the hype, the fight doesn’t really deliver much in the way of excitement or explosive action to start, with them instead taking it to the mat of all places. Strowman eventually catches Kato with a big punch and then follows up with some more on the mat for the stoppage. Well, that sure felt like they didn’t have plans for Kato at this stage so they decided to just have Strowman walk through him so they could quietly write him out a bit and then repackage him as the Commander. If Kato stuck around for a while after this in that guise though then feel free to sound out in the comments. Considering how often WWE liked to use the fact that MMA fights could end quickly as a way to knock UFC, they sure didn’t mind ending that much hyped Strowman/Kato confrontation in mere seconds did they? Honestly I don’t know why they even bothered hyping that up as much as they did, as it did very little for Strowman and Kato is basically finished mere weeks into playing this character, to the point that he would need repackaging after this.

Main Event
The Hurt Business (The All-Mighty Bobby Lashley, Cedric Alexander and Shelton Benjamin) w/ Montel Vontavious Porter Vs RETRIBUTION (Mace, Slapjack and T-BAR)

Mace is Dio Maddin/Ma-ce, Slapjack is Shane Thorne and T-BAR is Dominik Dijak, with all of them wearing wacky masks. There was a lot of complaints about the names for the RETRIBUTION guys, but they don’t really bother me that much. Yeah, they’re silly, but then so is “Triple H” and that eventually grew on people with time. I actually think the only name that sounds really silly is T-BAR, with Slapjack being acceptable and Mace actually sounding pretty cool. It doesn’t help that Jerry Lawler is openly laughing at and making fun of the names, which doesn’t help with making them seem like a credible Heel threat. It also doesn’t help that we’re supposed to feel sympathy for Alexander when he gets cut off and worked over by RETRIBUTION when we saw him being a snide Heel earlier on this show.

RETRIBUTION get the better of both Alexander and Benjamin in separate heat segments, with both of The Hurt Business guys doing a good job selling it all, even as previously mentioned it’s very hard to care or want them to fight back because they’ve been such jerks earlier in the show. Lashley eventually gets the hot tag and runs wild, looking good doing so. Slapjack actually does a fantastic job of making Lashley look like a monster here with some excellent bumping. Lashley locks Slapjack in The Hurt Lock and that looks to be the end, but T-BAR punches Lashley and the ref seemingly calls for the bell, giving us yet another lame DQ ending in a series of them tonight.

WINNERS BY DQ: THE HURT BUSINESS
RATING: *3/4

Thoughts: Honestly, did they bring Vince Russo back as a guest writer for this episode? Because bloody hell, with the whacked out Face/Heel alignment up and down the show and the parade of crappy finishes, I could swear that Russo had a hand in putting this show together. The actual wrestling in the match was fine, but it was impossible to care about The Hurt Business getting beaten up because they’d already established themselves as thoroughly unlikable earlier in the show, so it was tough for them to now play babyface all of a sudden. The finish was utterly awful too. How hard would it be for Alexander or Benjamin to eat a pin at the hands of T-BAR or Mace. They’re big dudes and if you had it happen during the chaos of a closing section then I doubt it would have done any damage to The Hurt Business whilst actually giving RETRIBUTION some steam. Lashley was the only guy in the faction that WWE had any real plans for anyway, so one of his stablemates could have easily looked at the lights here

RETRIBUTION tries the Heel beat down following the match, but Drew McIntyre leads the locker room out to chase them off whilst the camera goes nuts with cuts and zooming. Yeah, it was probably too early to do that angle. Honestly, if I’m a Raw roster member, I just let Hurt Business get battered. What’s the motivation to rescue them? They’re Heels who were quite literally beating innocent guys up backstage earlier in the night in order to send a message to RETRIBUTION. Hurt Business and RETRIBUTION are both Heel groups, let them kill one another. Randy Orton sneaks in with an RKO OUTTA NOWHERE on Drew to end the show, as the camera pans to the ambulance.

Is It Really A Stinker?

You know what vibes I got from RETRIBUTION? Aces and Eights, and that’s NEVER a good thing when it comes to a stable/faction. Generic masked people played by lower card guys who never win big matches. All they needed were the biker jackets to be honest.

As for the show itself, at first I didn’t think it was too bad, but then the overbooking kicked in and I soon started losing patience with it. Thomas Hall liked it more than I did though. Did this show really need so many RETRIBUTION/Hurt Business/Strowman segments? Did we need multiple beat down segments? It felt like all the worst elements of Crash TV at points during this, like they felt that because the show was taking place in the Thunderdome they had to keep THROWING stuff in the viewers face in order to keep them invested, when they really didn’t need to.

What with The Hurt Business switching their Face/Heel alignment depending on what segment they were in, limp finishes that were designed to protect people but only ensured that nobody would get over, confusing segments and angles that made me unsure whether characters were supposed to be Face or Heel (such as Bianca Belair being a massive jerk to that stranger at the gym, but seemingly still being a babyface) and just a general overabundance of segments with too much going on in them, this really felt like a bad Vince Russo edition of Raw/Nitro/Impact from back in the day.

And the Main Event of the show did very little other than make the hot new Heel stable look ineffective after just one official match. I mean, that almost takes some kind of perverse skill on WWE’s part. If RETRIBUTION had spent 10-15 minutes really battering The Hurt Business and then it ended in a DQ, it perhaps wouldn’t have been as bad, because at least RETRIBUTION could have claimed that they took it to The Hurt Business and physically dominated them before the non-finish. But they kind of just had a quick match and then it went to a DQ. I don’t think the match itself was longer than 6 minutes, after nearly 3 hours of hype I should add!

Whether RETRIBUTION were ever going to be capable of being an nWo level faction is one thing, but at the very least the WWE should have tried push them like that with some wins until it became clear that it wasn’t working. Is there anything more WWE than going to all that effort in building up a new act, only to then pretty much immediately give up on them just as quickly because Vince McMahon got distracted by something shiny? What an absolute debacle. I can only imagine what it was like watching this angle fall apart in real time every week three years ago. I’m glad I was only glancing at the odd angle on YouTube and not actually watching the show itself, because I think I would have tapped out pretty quickly had I been watching.

And they hyped the heck out of that Strowman Vs Dabba-Kato battle as well, and what we got was more disappointing and anaemic than a Fillet O Fish, with them having a quick crappy fight until Strowman defeated the supposed new monster easily without really breaking a sweat. Again, why not give Kato the win and see how far you can go with him? Strowman had already hit his ceiling at this point, so you might as well have tried to use him to put someone fresh over. Instead I don’t know how anyone was really supposed to buy this dude as a tough guy after Strowman had mopped the floor with him so easily. Erik lost quickly to Moss as well, but at least they presented that as the two guys being so gosh darn tough that they agreed to just stand there and swing without trying to protect themselves, so Erik had an out for his quick loss because anyone could go out quickly in that scenario. Strowman just utterly nullified Kato, no-sold everything Kato threw at him and then handily defeated him with some punches. There was no doubt who the better man was.

The Rollins and Mysterios stuff already seemed way past it’s sell by date here, and I think it went on for 2-3 more months after this too. Lana’s table angle was awful as well, through no real fault of her own. I mean, how are you supposed to make that work? Indeed, my main thought through most of this was that I felt sympathy for quite a few of the wrestlers because they were just given chicken you-know-what and were desperately trying to make it into some kind of a salad against all of the odds stacked against them. This is one of those occasions where the folks over on Cage Match are bang on, this show is absolutely honking!

FinalRating – Stinker

(Scores are done of a scale of Stinker/Stinky/Odourless/Pleasant/Fragrant)