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Wrestling’s 4Rs 6.28.13: WWE Monday Night Raw Reviewed Plus The Updated 2013 PPV Rankings
How the 4Rs of wRestling Work!
Here is a quick explanation of the 4R’s. The column will run TWO times a week. We will group our feelings on the shows in various categories: The Right, the wRong and the Ridiculous. The Right is stuff that worked very well: a great promo, a great match and so on. PuRgatoRy is a section between the right and wrong. It shows equal traits from both sides that cannot be ignored and need discussed. It is not a bad place per say, as things can get remedied or go the wrong way the very next week. The wRong is what it sounds like: bad matches, bad or boring promos and so on. The Ridiculous is stuff that had no right on TV: Stupid angles and so on. And there is always a possibility of a 5th R, which is as bad as they come. This column is supposed to be analytical, and at the right time very critical of the shows, it was the whole reason it was created. This is not a “mark” column, nor a “smark” column, our goal is to analyze the show from many different fronts, reward the good and call out the bad. We will not apologize for our opinions, they are as they are, whether positive or negative.
Let’s rock…
By: Greg DeMarco
WWE Monday Night Raw 6.24.13:
QUICK RESULTS:
I don’t do star ratings, star ratings are courtesy of Harry
Broadhurst’s Raw Report at wrestlingsmash.com!
Daniel Bryan vs. Randy Orton, Part 1: Many would call it short and meaningless. I’ll call it short—but it led to the final match of the night, and this was the perfect set-up.
Christian & Sheamus vs. Cody Rhodes & Damien Sandow: The real opener of the show, and it delivered exactly what it needed to deliver. You knew Sheamus was going over here, but everyone looked and the heels lose nothing in defeat.
Chris Jericho vs. Alberto Del Rio: The WWE needs to do whatever they can to keep Jericho happy. Despite being in the back nine of his career, he consistently delivers top quality matches with anyone the company pairs him with. This was a great match—and proves why Del Rio is more effective as a heel.
Dolph Ziggler attacks Alberto Del Rio and Chris Jericho: Is Ziggler a face? Is he a heel? Who knows! And who cares—they’re incorporating more Shades of Grey, and it’s working.
A brief appearance for The Shield: Just like we’ve been getting less John Cena recently, we got very little Shield this week. They are a very strong act, but they can run the risk of being overexposed. Their brief appearance got a huge pop and presented the Tag Team and United States Champions as a big deal.
Ryback vs. The Great Khali: Ryback has been heavily damaged over the past few months, and this is a step in the direction of repair.
John Cena Promo: John was on his game here, and he didn’t poke fun at Mark Henry like he does with many of his opponents. This usually undermines their threat to him—this instead puts Henry over as a legitimate opponent for the champ.
Paul Heyman and CM Punk Promo: Two of the very best in the business doing what they do best—talk. This segment was golden, and Punk’s renewed trust of Heyman (and eventually Axel) will help drag the Brock Lesnar feud out through SummerSlam.
Daniel Bryan vs. Randy Orton, Part 2: When was the last time we saw two faces battle it out in Street Fight (not counting that Christmas match with Cena & Del Rio)? These two delivered big time. They pulled out all the stops, including Orton using the Kendo stick to break the No! Lock, followed by Bryan reversing that attempt a
second time to use the Kendo stick in the lock. Randy Orton flourishes in a street fight environment, and Daniel Bryan beat him clean right in the center of the ring. Orton put Bryan over in a huge way, and we have a bona fide main event push on our hands.
Money In The Bank Advancement: The WWE Championship Money In The Bank, World Heavyweight Championship and Ryback-Jericho matches were all made official tonight. We can assume The Uso-Shield match will be added, and we advanced Cena-Henry. MITB is only a few short weeks away, and the company did a ton to build it here.
Triple Threat Tag Team Match: It wasn’t a bad match, but it wasn’t a great one, either. It was just there. I am glad to see The Usos getting their chance to shine, but the WWE needs to win me over with their tag team division booking before I can really buy-in to what they did tonight.
CM Punk vs. Darren Young: This match was about The Primetime Players attacking after the match, and Curtis Axel’s save. Which is fine—but the match itself didn’t deliver. Punk is the hot face now, and he should have gone over Young in easier fashion. They weren’t trying to elevate Young or the PTP here—so all that offense only hurts Punk.
Mark Henry Promo: John Cena’s promo felt inspired and passionate. Henry’s fell flat. But long-form promos aren’t Mark’s thing—beating fools up is! Henry would have been better off having a squash match. I’m sure Curt Hawkins was free!
Kaitlyn vs. Aksana, AJ Lee’s promo: This just did nothing for me. The dress-like-your-rival gimmick has worked in the past—didn’t work here.
WWE 2K14 cover reveal, Brickie promo: Just unnecessary, and could have been covered in a brief video package—even if they played it more than once to promote the contest. That’d be better than this.
NOTHING
Another solid edition of Raw. The Daniel Bryan Rise was the show’s main story arc, and was executed with brilliance. However, we also got a great Jericho-Del Rio match, a strong tag match from Sheamus, Christian, Rhodes & Sandow, a rebuilding match for Ryback and more. The good far outweighs the bad this week. Bonus points for the big Bryan win to close out the show. Show Rating: 8.5 As a reminder, I will be going by the 411 scale… 0 – 0.9: Torture |
ROH Best in the World iPPV Results and Quick Thoughts
Sorry that there isn’t a full review for the show, but the iPPV issues screwed that all up. Anyway, this was a good show from ROH, but nothing that you have to go out of your way to see. It was a show of mostly good matches, Elgin vs. Ciampa was easily the best on the show, and that’s about it. The tag title match felt rushed and like it didn’t even matter; and the main event was a rushed program which didn’t have the emotion that it could have, and came off a bit flat due to that. Also, while the show was good, I do not feel as if they did a lot to move things forward or make the matches and or results mean something. Jay retains the title, Hardy fucks Steen, Elgin and Ciampa was good, but what exactly did this show do? It was a $15 show that you couldn’t enjoy live filled with some good wrestling and that’s about it. Again, a good show and if you didn’t buy the live show and get pissed off with the streaming issues, it is worth checking out, but is far from a must see event. Show Rating: 7.0 As a reminder, I will be going by the 411 scale… 0 – 0.9: Torture As a reminder, this is not a basic “how good was the show” number like a TV show, as I have always felt that a PPV is very different from a regular show. I have always judged PPV on how they built to a match, the match quality, crowd reactions to matches and angles, the overall booking, how the PPV leads into the future, PPV price and so on and so forth. I have added this in here for an explanation since so many have asked, and I have previously discussed it on podcasts. I understand that this may seem different, but that is how I grade. Obviously your criteria may be different. |
New Japan Pro Wrestling Dominion iPPV Results and Quick Thoughts
New Japan Pro Wrestling returned to iPPV and they once again hit a grand slam. Seriously, this company simply makes me love wrestling with their iPPV events. A good opener, a great Jr tag bout, a fun six man, a good tag title defense and only the shit NWA Title match disappointed. But that set the stage for a run of greatness, with Minoru Suzuki & Shelton Benjamin vs. Shinsuke Nakamura & Tomohiro Ishii equaling the quality of the Jr tag, but in a completely different style, which is always appreciated. Tetsuya Naito vs. Yujiro Takahashi was good; Devitt vs. Tanahashi was great with Devitt owing the world as a heel right now. This all would have been enough to garner a good rating for the show, but there was more. Katsuyori Shibata vs. Hirooki Goto is a legit MOTY candidate, and a style that you will not see from the US promotions. Playing off of their previous match with the double KO finish, these guys went to WAR in a stiff and brutal match that not only played off of the first match, it trumped it in every way; but that was the hope by the booking of that first match. While it may not be everyone’s cup of tea, and I understand that, I felt it was not only great in booking, but the style felt so fresh as compared to everything else on the card and in wrestling. Kind of like when everyone loved Brock vs. Cena last year because it felt so different from WWE matches. The main event put a great cap on the show, as Kazuchika Okada defeated Togi Makabe to retain the IWGP Heavyweight Title. While receiving praise, may worried if Okada could deliver in the main event without Tanahashi as his opponent, but he did so here. This was a great main event, likely the best match on 95% of shows this year, unfortunately for them Shibata vs. Goto was on the card. Simply put this was an outstanding PPV event, with FIVE matches coming in at over four stars, and even more importantly, the matches all had a different feel an style to them; making the show feel even more special. In my opinion, New Japan Pro Wrestling is the king of PPV right now. Show Rating: 9.75 As a reminder, I will be going by the 411 scale… 0 – 0.9: Torture As a reminder, this is not a basic “how good was the show” number like a TV show, as I have always felt that a PPV is very different from a regular show. I have always judged PPV on how they built to a match, the match quality, crowd reactions to matches and angles, the overall booking, how the PPV leads into the future, PPV price and so on and so forth. I have added this in here for an explanation since so many have asked, and I have previously discussed it on podcasts. I understand that this may seem different, but that is how I grade. Obviously your criteria may be different. |
YEAR IN REVIEW (PPV) by Csonka:
As a reminder, this is not a basic “how good was the show” number like a TV show, as I have always felt that a PPV is very different from a regular show. I have always judged PPV on how they built to a match, the match quality, crowd reactions to matches and angles, the overall booking, how the PPV leads into the future, PPV price and so on and so forth. I have added this in here for an explanation since so many have asked, and I have previously discussed it on podcasts. I understand that this may seem different, but that is how I grade. Obviously your criteria may be different.
TOP PPVs:
TOP PPV MATCHES:
They’re comin…
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