The SmarK Rant for WWE Monday Night RAW – 11.18.24
By Scott Keith on 19 November 2024
The SmarK Rant for WWE Monday Night RAW – 11.18.24
Oh man, check out what my website overlords sent me today…
YES PLEASE. THIS IS AWESOME (clap clap clap-clap-clap). Do you know how excited I am to read the 1984 issues again on something that doesn’t look like it was done on an original Gutenburg printing press and a variety of handwritten footnotes? There might be some celebratory 84 Flashback redos in the future, lads!
And if you’d like to buy them for yourself, please check out the Amazon links below.
Oh yeah there’s a RAW show to review.
Taped from Grand Rapids, MI
Your hosts are Wade Barrett and the new guy with a hard name to remember but damn I really like him as an announcer. Joe whatever.
Liv Morgan and Raquel Rodriguez join us to start, having brought Nia Jax and her crew as backup this week. Apparently she’s ambivalent towards everyone in the ring, but she strongly dislikes Bianca Belair. So that brings out Team Bianca, who are sadly lacking in a fifth member, so that brings out the returning Rhea Ripley (with Virgil facemask) and I guess this is our WarGames match, which I was able to figure out because Rhea yelled “WARGAMES!” and then headbutted Liv and I’m good with subtext like that.
Meanwhile, on Smackdown, Roman Reigns in his new role as a pharmaceutical rep has a staredown with Jacob Fatu, but Bronson Reed, honorary Samoan, joins the Bloodline and attacks him. Wait, so they consider Sami Zayn to be an outsider but they’re OK with an Australian guy? Or did they just hear that he used to be Jonah Rock and assumed he was part of that family?
Meanwhile, Paul Levesque books Travis Scott for the RAW debut on Netflix in January. Hopefully they don’t book TOO many big stars because god knows they don’t have the server power to withstand much more than one Paul brother at a time. Jake Paul can box the reanimated corpse of Andre the Giant next.
Rey Mysterio & Zelina Vega v. Chad Gable & Ivy Nile
This is a mixed match, so the women stay together and the short people stay together. Rey slugs away on Chad in the corner to start, but Rey gets caught in the heel corner and Gable stomps him down to take over. Vega comes in with the suplexes attempt on Ivy, but she gets hit with a short clothesline and we take a break. Back with Ivy working on a facelock and she hits an exploder, but Vega comes back with a swinging DDT. Hot tag to Rey and he runs wild with a headscissors on Gable and follows with the seated senton and a cradle for two. Joe calls the senton a “west coast pop”, but points for effort. Gable with a DDT for two and he goes up, but Rey crotches him and sends Vega up there for a rana to bring him down, into a moonsault for two. 619 (which by a coincidence is how many live viewers Netflix can take before they crash) and a slingshot splash finish at 10:04. Afterwards, Gable and the Creeds work out their frustrations with the loss. A fine house show match. **1/2
Meanwhile, Finn Balor assigns the task of schooling the War Raiders to Dom & Carlito. Apparently going after the neck is the solution. Or a really really bad idea. Definitely one of those things.
Meanwhile, Miz betrays the freaky cosplayers and rejoins Karrion Kross’s group. I haven’t particularly been paying attention to Kross on the main roster but in NXT he was a great look and great promo and great entrance And Then The Bell Rang so hopefully he’s better now.
Last week, Gunther continues down his path of self-doubt, like Hangman Page but without the gardening tips and arson.
Meanwhile, Gunther sets free Ludwig Kaiser and tells him to go be his own man, and then finds Damian Priest and tries to choke him out, without much success. Well, he’s the Ring General, not the Backstage General.
Intercontinental title: Bron Breakker v. Sheamus
WCW 2000 has made me a little perturbed with the entire Steiner family tree so I’m probably cheering for Sheamus here as a result. They briefly brawl on the floor and Bron hits him with a clothesline to take over, as Wade notes that Bron has LUDICROUS SPEED, which is of course the only speed faster than light speed. Look I’m assuming that we didn’t just get a Spaceballs deep cut on this show from Wade but you never know. Bron suplexes him and sends him to the announce desk before smashing him through it, and we take a break. Thank god the Prime drink cart is OK! They slug it out and Bron hits a questionable attempt at a swanton off the post, which seemed like he was trying to decide between a blockbuster and a bodypress and kind of ended up doing neither. Back in the ring, Bron slugs away on Sheamus, but walks into a powerslam as Sheamus makes the comeback. Sheamus with the 10 beats on the apron and back in with the flying shoulder for two. Bron reverses out of White Noise, but Bron hits him with a backstabber for two. To the top, but Sheamus powers him into White Noise off the top, and that gets two. Back to the top and Bron gets a top rope rana this time, but walks into the knee strike and Sheamus gets two. Bron spears him to block the Brogue Kick and Sheamus bails to the floor to escape, but that brings Ludwig Kaiser out of the crowd for the DQ at 13:15. Sheamus seemed unusually gassed by his standards at times, but they were having a strong match before the shitty finish. Plus Bron’s dad was annoying me on the show from 24 years ago so he also loses points there. ***1/4. Given the relatively brisk runtimes of most of the other matches on these two hour shows, I’m not sure why they’d book this one to go more than 10 minutes before doing the fuck finish.
Meanwhile, the Usos and Sami make another pitch to Seth Rollins, but he just won’t bend on the Roman Reigns thing and keeps refusing. Yeah but if Roman Reigns DOES end up back in power, he could end up Attorney General! Well, I guess that’s that.
War Raiders v. Dominick Mysterio & Carlito
Dom gets beat up by Erik for a bit and then thinks better of it and tags Carlito in, but he also gets walloped and Erik slams Ivar onto him. Dom manages to trap Ivar in the heel corner, but he quickly fights out and makes the hot tag to Erik. So Carlito gets tossed around the ring, but Dom interferes from the apron and hits a dive on Erik as we take a break. Back with Dom hitting a slingshot senton for two. Ivar gets a hot tag and smashes Dom in various painful ways, and a cannonball gets two. He suplexes Dom onto Carlito and the Raiders double-team them both to death, and the War Machine finishes Carlito at 9:02. Mostly an extended squash for the Raiders. *1/2. Afterwards, Finn Balor and his annoying friend attack and Finn jumps on Erik’s neck to set up their presumed tag team title match at Survivor Series. I found it kind of odd that we’re two weeks away from the PPV and the show isn’t really making any effort to hype it or solidly announce matches for it. There’s a lot of stuff that COULD presumably happen there, but really it’s only the two Wargames matches and World title that we know for sure. Maybe they’ll just do a three match show this time? It would certainly give them ample time for vodka commercials and video packages about themselves.
Meanwhile, Bo Dallas is pretty upset about being betrayed by Miz, and he notes that “The trust of the innocent is the liar’s most effective tool”. Also the opinions of the idiots on Twitter, so I’ve heard.
Meanwhile, Lyra Valkyria is coming for everyone.
Meanwhile, Alpha Academy bumps into the New Day, who get into an argument about their arguing. But then Woods decides to get his groove back by beating Otis and Tozawa next week. Unless this leads into Big E making his triumphant return to reunite them ala the Hart Foundation in 1997, this whole thing falls squarely into “Who the hell could possibly want to see this?” for me.
Bronson Reed v. Seth Rollins
They brawl to the floor after a brief cameo from every Samoan and Samoan-adjacent wrestler in the building, and we take a break. Then return with Reed in control out there and then back in for a clothesline to the floor. Reed charges and hits the stairs by mistake, but Seth misses his stomp on them. Back in the ring, Seth with superkicks and Reed shrugs him off and hits an angry powerbomb for two as we take another break. Really? There’s like 5 minutes left in the show. Back with them fighting on the top rope and Seth brings him down with a powerbomb and a Lionsault gets one. Seth with a springboard senton for one. He keeps coming with a frog splash for two. Reed fires back with a brainbuster for two and goes up to finish, but Seth rolls out of the way and hits him with a Pedigree for two. Curb stomp and he goes up again, but Solo Sikoa runs interference and Bronson slams him off and finishes with the Tsunami splash at 17:38. And we’re off the air promptly at two hours exactly, which man do I appreciate as I get older and more tired. Nice little David v. Goliath match to end the show, although way too much of it happened during the breaks. **(Hold on, I have to throw to an ad break before I can finish the rating)*1/2
This was the third episode in a row that was right in the sweet spot of pleasant enough pro wrestling for two hours without being particularly offensive or challenging at any point. And man that Joe guy is really damn smooth but hell if I can remember his name even if you held a gun to my head. Not really much is interesting me on the Survivor Series card, but given Vancouver has hosted two of the historical worst PPVs in modern history, I have to figure they’re due to turn things around at some point.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk and I’ll see you next week.