Bring on Extreme Rules!
WWE Monday Night Raw Review
This Sunday at Extreme Rules, Roman Reigns defends his WWE World Heavyweight Championship against AJ Styles, and it was the Phenomenal One who looked stronger on Monday Night Raw. While AJ’s Bullet Club pals Anderson and Gallows lost to Reigns’ cousins Jimmy and Jey Uso the two contenders for WWE’s greatest prize faced off in a classic wrestling stare down.
Firstly Anderson and Gallows got involved before the Usos cleared house – leaving AJ Styles and a steel chair standing over Roman. The Champ replied with a huge right hand, and then a chair shot across AJ’s spine. Another distraction from the Bullet Club allowed Styles to plant Roman with a chair shot, and then to put the exclamation mark on events AJ finally hit the Styles Clash onto Roman onto the steel. AJ hasn’t been able to execute the move successfully for weeks, so to see Roman get planted onto a chair was very enjoyable for all involved. Let’s hope for a repeat performance on Sunday night.
Elsewhere there was a very entertaining tag match between the four men who will battle it out for the Intercontinental Championship on Sunday. After Sami Zayn and Cesaro’s match was interrupted by a brawling Kevin Owens and Miz, Shane McMahon and Stephanie said that there’ll be a tag match in place with former friends turned bitter enemies KO and Sami reuniting, while Cesaro and Miz had to form an alliance.
As expected this went as well as allowing Donald Trump to run a presidential campaign, and broke down on numerous occasions. The most dramatic came towards the end as Miz tagged himself in, threw his partner Cesaro to the floor, and then tried to mimic the Swiss Superman’s swing on Sami Zayn. Cesaro was less than impressed and hit Miz with his own finisher – The Skull Crushing Finale. Owens took out Cesaro allowing Sami to hit Miz with a Helluva Kick for the win. KO wasn’t done however and rolled back in to hit his partner with a Superkick. These four guys teed up what could be the match of the night come Extreme Rules.
In Monday’s main event we had a contract signing between Natalya and Charlotte ahead of their Women’s Championship match on Sunday night. Natayla signed the contract as Charlotte called her another member of the ‘whining Hart family’ but when it came to the Champ’s turn to sign, Charlotte clocked something she didn’t like. Shane and Steph had added a stipulation saying that if Charlotte’s old man, Ric Flair, even walks to the ring on Sunday then Charlotte loses the title.
Ric lost his mind at this point and his face went a worrying shade of red for a man of his age. Shane tried to calm him down before Steph nonchalantly slapped seven shades of sh*** out of Ric. Ric sold it like a dream and Natayla nailed Charlotte with a Sharpshooter. Momentum with the challenger…
Elsewhere on the show Alberto Del Rio beat the US Champ Kalisto, while the challenger for the strap Rusev battered a helpless Sin Cara. Big Cass continued to pick up wins in the absence of Enzo, this time laying out D-Von Dudley with the East River Crossing in less than a minute. FaBreeze picked up a win over the Golden Truth after a miscommunication between R-Truth and Goldust as the most pointless feud of 2016 continues, while Dana Brooke picked up another win over Becky Lynch.
Luckily to save the show, The New Day entertained us by mocking The Vaudevillians with a New Daylorean Time Machine. Unfortunately however the challengers for the tag team titles appeared and flattened the New Day, with Woods being reintroduced to the Daylorean.
We also found out that there’s a No DQ match at Extreme Rules between Baron Corbin and Dolph Ziggler, while Dean Ambrose and Chris Jericho will face off in an ‘Asylum Match’. This is a classic cage match with a twist – the twist being that the cage has a load of weapons on top including a mop and a fire extinguisher. Good ol’ WWE.