Review: WWE Raw (12-2-2024)
Raw is LIVE from Angel of the Winds Arena in Everett, Wash., home to the Everett Silvertips!
HEY! It’s a new month, the last one we’ll have in 2024, if you’re someone who believes in the myth of the calendar, and we’re two days removed from Survivor Series! It’s also the final month of Raw on USA before the move to Netflix.
Arriving: Kofi Kingston by himself! Xavier Woods by himself! They’ll “celebrate” their anniversary! CM Punk! He comes across Jey Uso and Sami Zayn. Jey and Punk shake hands enthusiastically, and more tentatively, so do Punk and Zayn. And we follow Punk out.
CM Punk is kicking off Raw: Punk says “Paul Heyman” and people chant “ECW.” Punk points at nothing but, see, he can see it. He can see The WrestleMania Sign, and his future is headlining WrestleMania, which to be fair is a lot easier now that there are two nights. Jimmy Uso has done it, for pete’s sake. He’s not committing to either Royal Rumble or Elimination Chamber yet, but he does have a favor he can call upon. And now he is interrupted.
Seth Rollins is joining CM Punk: Eventually, Seth speaks! He’s been thinking he should have knocked Punk’s ass out the day he came back to WWE. “I regret that every single day for the past year.” Says he had pity for Punk last time he saw him coming out of Hell in a Cell, which was a mistake. Rollins’ hatred was again ignited seeing Punk triumphant with Roman Reigns. Rollins takes his jacket off and starts yelling, Punk is motionless and showing no real response, but he does speak: “You talk too much and you don’t listen enough. … Six months ago you were a champ, you had something I wanted. Now you got nothin’.” He says Rollins isn’t his future, and while Seth has thought of him for six months, he doesn’t think about Seth at all. Rollins throws the “talk too much and don’t listen enough” line back at Punk and shoves him on his ass. Punk gets up and shows off his MMA fighting skills to the full extent of their believability. Jey Uso and Sami Zayn run in to break this up. Adam Pearce and the boys are down as Punk is walked out by Uso, but Seth calls him back. There’s an honest scrappiness to this, two guys who can’t fight but are pissed off.
And now it’s taking a turn: Rollins takes a verbal shot at Jey Uso “running back to Roman Reigns,” and Sami Zayn takes exception to that, and Wade Barrett can’t help but chuckle at how dorky that seems. Seth agrees that Jey is Roman’s family, but what’s Sami’s excuse? Rollins believes he’s family with Zayn and he’s mad that Sami teamed with Punk, but Sami points out that he didn’t want to team with Punk, he asked Rollins twice to team with them and he said no. These two go over what they’ve already been over. This is an absolute idiot argument. Zayn blames Rollins turning on the Shield all those years ago for Roman Reigns being a dick. This is tremendously bad, I love it. Rollins calls Zayn naive, gullible, and stupid. Well, if the shoe fits and all. They’ve annoyed each other enough that they’re going to have to wrestle tonight. Well if it gets approved, which it always does.
Backstage: The Judgment Day are at least a little at odds, and the sides are perfectly split with Finn, JD, and Carlito on one side and Liv, Dom, and Raquel on the other. Finn and Liv are playing mind games with each other. Finn leaves. Liv sends Dominik to “keep an eye on” Finn as she and Raquel go out for their match. JD and Carlito, to their great relief, are free to get back to video games.
Liv Morgan & Raquel Rodriguez vs Iyo Sky & Kairi Sane
Liv vs Iyo is set for Saturday Night’s Main Event on the 14th. Morgan is slow early to sell her injuries from Survivor Series. Joe Tessitore couldn’t believe his eyes when he was definitely watching on Saturday and Iyo Sky did that thing she does every time there’s a cage near here.
Kairi hits her elbow on Raquel, but Liv makes a save. Iyo with a tope suicida onto Liv. Rodriguez pins Sane on a Tejana Bomb.
Post-match: Liv and Raquel beat up Iyo a bit and now here comes Rhea Ripley. Liv runs away at the last second, leaving Raquel to get smacked up. Raquel blocks Riptide, but is kicked in the skull and clotheslined out. Ripley follows and smashes Raquel’s head into the desk a few times, at which point Liv jumps on Ripley’s back but gets posted. And then Ripley has her bad orbital bone shoved into the corner of the desk. I mean, there is never a good time to get your orbital bone smacked into the corner of a desk, but I suppose this is especially bad.
Backstage: Finn Balor (with Dominik Mysterio) confronts Gunther to say the champ owes him a title match. Gunther says he owes Finn fuck all and didn’t want his help. Balor tries to use that anger to bait Gunther into a title match, but it backfires, as Gunther turns his attention to Dominik, pointing out that he actually has a win over Priest. So Gunther’s going to go talk to Pearce.
Katana Chance vs Shayna Baszler vs Dakota Kai
WWE Women’s Intercontinental Title Tournament
They’re doing the exact format tournament that the women’s U.S. title tournament has on Smackdown. After the break, Kai is almost crying when she gets a two count. Chance fails at a power bomb because she is, in Wade’s words, “such a diminutive individual.”
Chance ranas Kai onto Baszler, pins Baszler for two, pins Kai for two. Baszler knees Kai for two. Respect to the Everett faithful, they’re not going wild or anything but there is a consistent hum in the crowd, at least. Kai with a scorpion kick on Baszler, but Shayna gets her in the sleephold. Chance with a 450 onto them, but now it’s Kai who hits one of her fancy kicks on Chance for the win.
Video: New Day highlights. Very funny that Kofi and Big E have WWE title wins in there and the best they can do for Woods is his forgettable King of the Ring win.
Backstage: Kofi and Woods walk in a split screen. The “celebration” is next.
Liv Morgan is a way better heel merch salesperson than Tiffany Stratton.
New Day’s 10-year celebration: Adam Pearce is in the ring with a bunch of New Day crap all over the place. Woods and Kofi do enter together, and they manage some smiles because there’s more New Day crap up by the entrance screen. Pearce congratulates them and starts a “New Day Rocks” chant, then steps out. Woods holds his mic stupid like usual. It appears Big E will not be here. Oh my God, New Day are about to announce their divorce to all of you, their children. Before they can get to it, Big E *is* here, to that familiar Big E theme music we all know and love. Big E’s soul is troubled by seeing these two argue and bicker. Kofi was ready to retire when New Day started. Big E and Woods were close to getting fired. They were there when Big E broke his neck. Babies. Crying. E is leaving the door open to someday be medically cleared, but says until then he’ll remind them who they are, every single week as their manager. The crowd is very excited. And Woods is not receptive. “Now? Now you wanna come back? After you watched us fight for months? … E, you left us.” Kofi … joins Woods. Oh my. “You broke your neck. So what?” Says Austin, Angle, Edge broke their necks and came back, even without people here waiting. Oh, this is heartbreakingly mean-spirited. “Do you even realize the burden you’ve become?” Woods says E will never be medically cleared. “And since that’s the case, why don’t you get the hell out of this ring and get back to your desk where you belong?” Big E is devastated. “We can fix this!” he’s shouting, holding his arms open, but Kofi shuts it down and Woods turns his head away. When E leaves the ring, Woods and Kofi shake hands and tell each other it’s just them now.
Video: Karrion Kross is very mad at Bo Dallas for sending “that creature” Nikki Cross after his wife. He wants the Wyatt Sicks in the arena next week. His promo work here is good. “You started this fire, now I’m going to make sure that you burn in it.” You know, he should ditch “tick tock.” It never lands.
Gunther vs Dominik Mysterio
This is non-title. Mysterio wants to go it alone here, send JD and Carlito back to play video games, which is probably fine with them. Gunther dismissive of Dominik, but crafty Dominik ranas Gunther’s skull into the ring post, dropkicks him off the apron, and hits a tope suicida. To commercial!
PIP during the break1 sees Dominik trying to avoid contact with Gunther as much as he can, but it’s not working out so great. Mysterio tries to chop and gets one-shotted down.
Well, Dominik is fighting. Give him that. Gunther gets the sleephold on, but Dom hits a good nut shot, 619 to the breadbasket, then one to the head. Dominik is ON A ROLL! Frog splash hits and he gets two. Gunther’s done now. Foot, chop, power bomb, that’ll do it. ***¼
Post-match: Finn Balor runs in with the ol’ sneak attack on Gunny and does some damage. Balor hits his stomp repeatedly, just destroying Gunther. Finn wants da belt.
Backstage: Cathy Kelley is with Pete Dunne. “Joe, it sounds like chaos out there!” Cathy it was pretty standard wrestling stuff. heeeeeeeeeh haaaaaaaaah she almost says butch. fuck it is funny every time still. always was So funny. I think maybe this would work better if anyone cared about Pete Dunne OR Butch.
Elsewhere: Let’s run over to Something Else Happening and abandon this. Jey Uso has been hit by a mystery assailant! Right on his noggin, looks like!
Pete Dunne vs R-Truth
Oh, man, I just don’t care. Pete gets distracted by kids in the crowd yelling “Butch” and R-Truth rolls him up for the win.
Backstage: Cathy is doing journalism with Bron Breakker. He’s a little less intensely over-tanned this week. Breakker is interrupted quickly by Ludwig Kaiser. Does HHH ever consider mixing things up at all? He gets one idea for a certain thing and that’s how it goes, every time. Kaiser wants the IC title. Breakker’s fine with it, and says Gunther’s stock is falling so Kaiser should be trying to get out of his shadow sooner.
Next week: Rhea vs Raquel. Lyra vs Zelina vs Ivy Nile. Wyatt Sicks vs Final Testament & Miz in an eight-man.
Backstage: Sami Zayn approaches Adam Pearce (telephone) to ask what happened to Jey. Pearce doesn’t know. Zayn thinks he knows who did it. He thinks it was Seth Rollins. It’s time for a match! After commercials!
Backstage: Adam Pearce is on the telephone yet again. Finn Balor wants a title match. Balor doesn’t care about his tag belts. Gunther does want the match, so Balor gets a title shot at Saturday Night’s Main Event. Hell yeah. Gonna be a good program. But next week, Pearce has to talk to Finn about his OTHER title match.
Sami Zayn vs Seth Rollins
Right to commercial after the bell, basically. Woo. This match kinda feels like nothing but it will be A Good Match. And it’s not anything they did wrong, they did their best with the promo earlier. I just have the feeling that this is end-show filler. Just me, maybe. And either way, good filler.
Zayn gets knocked down on the floor and Seth takes a breath, then comes out there and says he doesn’t want this fight, his fight’s with Punk. But Zayn slaps Seth in the face twice and says he knows Seth attacked Jey Uso. He’s probably wrong, as again, Sami Zayn is a very dumb individual. And Barrett doesn’t really buy it, either. Just doesn’t make any sense or have any logic.
Seth denying that he did it, but Zayn kicks him in the face. Sami now has a chair and is stalking Rollins, Rollins now loudly denying it. “Did you ask your buddy Punk? … It sure as hell wasn’t me!” Sami is conflicted and coming to his senses. Rollins cradles him for the win because, well, the match was still on. Again, this was totally fine, but it wasn’t much. They obviously could have a far better match, this wasn’t about that.
Post-match: Rollins advises Sami to start using his head even though he “loves his heart,” and again firmly denies attacking Jey Uso. Tessitore is more interested in who attacked Jey Uso than I am, honestly. I think that’s another thing going on here, I am just not that interested in that Mystery. Zayn standing there in the ring, lost in his thoughts, turns around, and — Drew McIntyre lays him out with a Claymore! Ah.
GRADE: B
An OK ‘sode, pretty good even. I think WWE has their show pacing at two hours pretty locked in right now, but the way they’re doing it also makes a lot of weeks feel pretty light if entirely amusing.
But there was some great stuff tonight, it was just mainly with microphones. The New Day rebirth into the power of negativity with Big E having to take the released fury of Kofi and Woods was excellent wrestling TV, truly. That’s the sort of home run you’re swinging for with stuff like that, but it’s rare to hit it outta the park to that degree.
I think the Punk-Rollins-Zayn stuff was good, the Wyatts have actually gotten me somewhat interested in Karrion Kross’ doings and transpirings, and it was fun to watch Dominik play underdog babyface against Gunther to a degree, even though obviously the budding face in that situation is Gunther. And I like the Gunther vs Finn plug-and-play program, too.
Three Stars of the Show
New Day: All of them, reunited for the last time for now. Obviously someday they’re all going into the Hall of Fame together, and I’m certain they’ll be back and smiling and clapping at some point on TV, but it’s not going to be any time soon. When I noticed Kofi’s expression not changing at all as Woods started ripping into E, I picked up where they were headed, and then they just killed it, all of them. Woods is terrific on the mic, that was some of the best work Kofi’s ever done in a “what if Ricky Steamboat finally just fucking lost it” sort of way, the nicest man in the world has finally snapped, and Big E was perfectly melodramatic, and he’s so likable that you can’t help but just feel terrible for him. And he can’t even physically fight them anymore, he can’t respond in normal wrestling ways. (Woods, for the record, has always clearly been the nastiest shit of the group, which probably owes to him being a gamer. Horrible people.)
Seth Rollins: Well, of all the people to finally be the one to tell Sami Zayn flat-out, point-blank, no-bones-about-it, that he is a moron, it’s Seth Rollins. And it’s deserved. He’s kinda told him when Sami kept offering the War Games spot, but tonight he had to just make it clear so that maybe it would finally get through Zayn’s thick skull.
Karrion Kross: I thought his quick little pre-tape was quite good and he never gets in these spots, so let’s send one out to ol’ Kiki! Way to go, champ!
“Deal or No Deal Island” is a real thing? What’s wrong with you people? What is it that you have done?
I’m kinda surprised Pete isn’t getting at least a semi-push under Trips. Thought there was an interest in him way back when in NXT that was about on the level as DIY or Gunther. Like, that doesn’t equal main event push now, but I figured Paul would at least halfass a level of serious focus on him like we see with DIY or Kross.