Welcome to the “Raw Is MSG” edition of The Wrestling List. A bunch of moments tonight including Cena’s final Raw, AJ Lee’s return, Dolph Ziggler surprise, Roman and Brock return, and more. This felt like a we have Survivor Series in two weeks and we need to put this on the hot booking express lane. Let’s get into it.
Let’s start with the opening of the show with John Cena’s final Raw appearance and also his final appearance at Madison Square Garden. Huge pop for Cena. Loved the Farewell Tour gear he was wearing. Loved the whole design of that shirt. One of my favorite farewell tour shirts so far. Cena cuts his promo and is interrupted by Dom like last week. Dom goes for his rematch to which Cena grants for tonight. However, Dom says we did things your way last week and we’re doing things my way this time. He wants his rematch on his own turn of San Diego with Survivor Series. Cena accepts. So, we have the Intercontinental title rematch coming up at Survivor Series between them. Cena pushes for a match without the title tonight and this is interrupted by Judgment Day coming out to stack the numbers. Balor and JD jump in. Cena gets help from Sheamus and Rey Mysterio. We have a six man tag for Cena’s final Raw and MSG match. I’m for this with having a Cena and Sheamus moment cause we have not had that unless I’m completely forgetting something from this year. The rivalry from 2010 flashback. I actually saw two of their matches live that year at back to back shows so seeing those two in the ring brings back memories. This was a fun match. I loved the moment with Cena, Sheamus, and Rey all lining up to do the “you can’t see me” fist drop and Sheamus stopping it for the moment and moving Cena to the middle of the ring instead of the side where he was. I loved the triple finisher moments. JD, Balor, and then Dom hitting finishers in fast speed on to Cena with Sheamus and Rey jumping in to break up the pin. Then, the finish had the triple finishers on the other side. Rey with the 619, Sheamus with kick, and Cena with the AA. Good stuff! Very fun match and the crowd energy was great!
AJ Lee is back!! I was wondering if she was going to be there tonight especially with her being in the area with a convention appearance over the weekend. Tonight felt like a good scenario to bring her back. Becky is pulling the turnbuckle off to use the exposed steel on Maxine. AJ’s music hits and I absolutely loved the production of having the camera following her skipping to the ring. AJ distracts Becky. Maxine nails Becky with a top rope cross body and gets the pinfall to win the Intercontinental title. I said this last week but championships are changing hands like crazy lately! I actually expected us to get an AJ vs Becky Intercontinental title match with AJ taking the belt from her. Instead they went with the distraction tonight to get the surprise title change. Then, we get the segment backstage with AJ talking to Maxine. As she goes off to celebrate with her team, AJ is asked if she is sticking around to which AJ says that she had just come back to originally help her husband. However, Becky just drives her crazy. Rhea walks up asking AJ if she can talk. That sure looks like a tease that AJ may be the 5th for that team. I assume it will be Becky on the other side. Geez, how about that booking pitch? Hey AJ, how about we put you in War Games for your second match back? LOL. Wow. Happy AJ Lee fan here tonight with her segments tonight!
What about the men’s War Games? Well, it looks like we have our 5th on each side of that match. It went the way I expected it to be. The four members brawling in the ring from both sides. Brock Lesnar’s music hits and he goes to the ring wrecking havoc. Roman Reigns music hits and we have the big confrontation of them facing off. Stand off and then to explosion with Roman taking him down with a superman punch. The brawl is on including having the gimmick of the “NYPD” being involved to where they’ve supposedly had to call in the officers. Roman takes Bronson through the barrier with a spear and also takes a “NYPD officer” with them as the show goes off the air. Looks like next week will be the follow up drama of how Roman will get involved as the 5th member of the Punk team.
The John Cena tournament continued. Fun match with Gunther and Je’Von Evans. Fun clash of styles. I’ve seen Evans vs Oba Femi and that was very fun so this felt like it would be very similar. It was. Gunther gets the win and interesting to note too that Gunther’s old music was back. I wonder if they are going to go back to a Walter style with him going back to his routes a bit with his early WWE gimmick. The other match had Solo against a surprise opponent. Huge pop from MSG as Dolph Ziggler’s music hits and he is the surprise. Didn’t expect that! Good match here and the crowd was really into it. Ziggler gets a close moment with a very near pinball but Solo puts him away with the spike.
Alexa Bliss cut a promo talking to the camera to Charlotte saying that Charlotte won’t get back in contact with her. The crowd was giving Alexa “what” chants which was annoying. The heel team interrupts and surrounds Alexa. Iyo and Rhea run out to help Alexa. The numbers are still not even but Charlotte’s music hits and she runs out with a kendo stick attacking the heels. Charlotte helps Alexa up and then embraces Alexa. They look over at Rhea. The story has been that Charlotte can’t put her issues with Rhea in the past to team up here. So, in this moment they look over at Rhea and Iyo. This was a funny moment and I think it made Charlotte break character and laugh. Iyo then just takes a step and embraces Rhea in the same way that Charlotte was embracing Alexa. I laughed out loud. Charlotte did too which made me think it might have been a spontaneous moment. Either that or Iyo’s funny face and body language of how she did it made the moment better. LOL. I will say this that they need to be careful with this booking of Charlotte last week. When Charlotte walked away, the crowd turned on her obviously. You’ve put a lot of work into trying to rehab Charlotte with the fans by putting her with Alexa. It’s worked. So, the last thing you need to do is do some dumb booking and undo it and make fans go against her again.
Other notes from Raw. I said it already but it felt like WWE was trying to flip the switch and take the Survivor Series build on to an adrenaline pumping level with it only being two weeks out and they definitely used MSG strong as the backdrop for that. When Roman hit the spear through the barrier to close the show, I thought he took out two of the “NYPD officers” cause I didn’t see Bronson initially on the impact. LOL. I was thinking, geez, he is just out here destroying everyone. LOL. But he got Bronson and one officer. How loud was that “it’s clobbering time” from MSG on the Punk entrance! Nikki Bella continued her heel turn tonight attacking Stephanie and it will be them at Survivor Series for the title. MSG went full out in paying tribute to Cena’s last appearance including putting him on the marquee outside and also having a photo gallery of his appearances. Ringside also had Cena commemorative chairs to take home. Nice souvenirs for the fans that paid $500,000 for those tickets. LOL. Speaking of ringside, even Green Shirt Guy got a chant from MSG at one point during the show.
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