As someone who has watched WWE since the late 90s, I do feel certain bouts of nostalgia when the RAW Reunion came on this past Monday. Seeing a bunch of men and women from the past WWE is always a good reminder of why I started watching this product in the first place.
That said, because it’s been said that this Reunion was the idea of the FOX network as WWE transitions over to that channel starting around the fall, and not Vince McMahon’s idea, it did have the overall feel of something that was thrown together at the last minute, rather than marking some important milestone in RAW history like the 1000th episode.
If this was a McMahon planned reunion, the Rock would certainly have been on somehow given the former WWE Champion’s schedule. At least John Cena was able to show up, apparently at the personal request from McMahon.
D-Von Dudley coming out with the Revival actually makes sense even from the ‘real’ behind the scenes situation on the show. Dudley is a backstage producer of the show and, as a former WWE Tag Team Champion, is probably mentoring teams like the Revival on their character and their presentation.
Once again, the 24/7 Championship segments were gold. I tweeted out that it was most likely some returning legend was going to get their hands on the title, and by the night was over several of them, including women like Kelly Kelly, Candace Michelle and Alundra Blayze ended up being champions. But is anyone getting tired of the trading of the 24/7 title back and forth between Drake Maverick and R-Truth, or could a third player be inserted into the fray.
Ironically, the 24/7 Championshp saw more action by women wrestlers (or past women wrestlers) than the actual women on the RAW roster. Becky Lynch and Natalya were reduced to having a brawl during Alexa Bliss’ show while she and ‘friend’ Nikki Cross were casually sipping coffee. This prompted an outpouring on social media reminiscent of the #GiveDivasAChance movement from several years ago.
This may have been a glaring oversight, perhaps due to all the scheduled segments of returning legends and RAW alumni, and the reactions may be a bit overblown at this point that this is somehow a ‘step back’ for the Women’s Evolution. Let’s see what happens next week.
But now to perhaps the most cringy portion of the RAW Reunion and that is Seth Rollins promo and subsequent match with AJ Styles that saw DX and the Kliq come back up the former Shield member. At first I didn’t see much of anything when Seth started saying Brock Lesnar was a ‘Seth Rollins’ wannabe, but then when he started cutting off Paul Heyman, which is very unnatural if you ever see a Paul Heyman segment, the alarm bells went off.
When the segment with the Kliq and DX came on, I just about died. This was not natural Seth Rollins territory, and hearing Rollins do the ‘if you’re not down with that, we got two words for ya…’ line was the most cringy part for me of the RAW Reunion. At least creative didn’t totally bury AJ’s new stable ‘The OC’ like they did with the Revival on a previous old school RAW from before.
It is always good to see Steve Austin back on a WWE show, even if it’s only for a few minutes. If the entire show was cringy at best, Austin’s heartfelt speech about how the WWE was like a family made watching the 3 hours at least worth something.
Overall, because this was primarily a FOX network requested show, it seemed almost all the segments had the babyfaces coming out on top to give the audience something to cheer about. It didn’t do much to advance most of the storylines leading up to Summerslam, but for nostalgic fans it was at least something to chew on for positive vibes.
An average professional doing the 9-5 grind who really loves wrestling across all platforms. Here's hoping wrestlers finally get some basic workers rights in 2021.
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