:lol: the celebration stuff.

Kane might be willing to give one of those guys a new job in the Concessions stand.

<font color=goldenrod>WWE can't seem to ever have 2 good Raws back to back again.</font>

He played a Rosebud on a live show.

Bullshit.

The Ryback has been firrrrrrrrred

BEST

RAW

EVER!!!!!!!

YES! YES! YES! YES! YES YES!

<font color=goldenrod>I mean, don't get me wrong. I laughed at the music and the confetti too. But why would you book a show where the heels come out on top in literally every match barring whether we're still meant to like Natalya or not? Why three hours of that? What in the world just happened?</font>

What in the world just happened was the reversion of all storyline advancement/"momentum" since Survivor Series. Feels like I stepped in a time warp.

Was this an episode of Raw or nWo Souled Out?

very boring show outside of Dolph/Barrett and Bray/Ambrose

Authority storyline so dumb and boring

Anyone who says that show was anything close to good, is either brainwashed, or a retard.

I just think it's depressing that the shows CAN be as well booked as they were leading up to WrestleMania last year (and even a little after) but instead usually tend to be more like tonight's "through the motions" decision making.

Seems sad that the Ambrose/Wyatt blowoff was on RAW instead of on a PPV. That feud deserved better than this.

Just skipped through the entire show in like 15 minutes. And a few of those minutes were spent just watching the end celebration because I thought it was kinda hilarious.

Cena needs to stick around forever. No one is ever gonna get to his level again the way things are booked now. Abysmal.

I honestly feel like the booking process is basically just "We're gonna stay afloat as a company forever no matter what. Let's just fill 3 hours and get it over with".

When there's a show that could DIRECTLY lead to them making more money like Survivor Series when they needed to get people who had the free trial to sign up for the network or when the original 6 month subscription ended for most people, then they at the very least make an effort to pull out the big guns for the main event. Outside of that, they really just don't seem to care.

Only way this can be salvaged is if, next week, we get a mysterious team called the Machines. The members, naturally, would be the Show Off Machine, the Big Guy Machine, and the Sheep Machine. Maybe set up an 8 Man tag for the Raw before the Royal Rumble, where the Machines and special tag team partner Cena Machine face the Authority.

Sorry for the double-post, but here's my inspiration...

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/jVFqENHSXOk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

The Giant Machine was also part of this dynamic stable.

And have Vince come out before the match and say that if the Authority loses, they are out of power. And the only man who can bring them back is Cena Machine!

Maybe, instead of Cena Machine, they can bring John's Mexican cousin Juan Cena to team with them.

Sheep Machine. Good gimmick for Rowan. He can just come out in the mask like he always did... except now he also does the robot.

JBL basically buried The Ascension on commentary.

This is obviously some dick move that he was told to say by someone. It seems like somoene backstage tries to hurt Triple H's guys from NXT. The whole commentary of JBL, who is consistantly a heel commentator, suddenly turning against The Ascension (which both of them are heels), was terrible to my ears.

You are trying to get this guys over as this massive tag team, and yet all I heard on commentary is "they can't carry the Road Warriors' bags, they just defeated nobodies, they fought some guys that I don't know their names'. Like, seriously, WTF was that?! Is that how they want to put them over?!

And please explain me to me how this 'sole survivor' gimmick for Ziggler now works with him getting fired? What was the whole point of having him have this great showing on Survivor Series, just that he lose the belt to Barrett, with Kane's interference.

And is it really that good to repeat this 'we got you fired, but it seems like the security can't stop you from entering the building and beating us up in the ring' routine over and over?

I know...what the fuck is WWE doing building up heels to take on a god-like babyface? :roll:

Ending to RAW was awesome.

Seriously. While Raw was a bit mediocre and obvious, the ending accomplished just what it needed to do. This may be the best thing for Ziggler ever. He takes a shit ton of punishment for Cena, ends up being the last guy on the team and winning (even after Cena "lets his own team down"), and then ultimately gets fired when the guy who got him into all of this, who couldn't even get the job done, goes back on his word.

Ziggler is basically set up to be a vindictive face. If they have "big things" in mind for Ziggler, this is part of that path.

Complaint: "WWE does no long-term booking or building up of people."

RAW has storylines that tie in from a month ago, but the "end game" isn't obvious.

"WWE fucking sucks. WTF are they doing."

3 months later when babyface gets the long awaited big moment.

"HOLY SHIT! WWE IS AWESOME!!!!"

The next night, the babyface faces any adversity.

"WTF. WWE is already burying him."

WrestleMania 31

Brock Lesnar (c) vs Daniel Bryan
Dolph Ziggler vs John Cena
Bray Wyatt vs The Undertaker
Triple H vs Sting


Those 4 marquee matches along with an undercard featuring Cesaero, Wade Barrett, Ryback, etc. is going to be an awesome show and the continued development of the new youth movement in WWE. Remember, WWE didn't instantly get hot in the 90s. It took time. WWE is also trying to figure out how to traverse the brand new world of the post-PPV business model.

Seriously, do any of us have any idea what John Cena will do next week or going forward? While not on as huge of a level, this is almost as big of a potential crossroads/major shift for John Cena's character since his loss to The Rock. I sincerely believe Cena's character could get more interesting than it's been in a long time. He's basically gotten the shit beaten out of him for the past 6 months, not had a legitimate big match win in as much time, and now he has screwed over his friends, going to lose at Royal Rumble, and for the first time in his career be in a non-title match 2 years in a row at WrestleMania. There is no way a catchphrase and new t-shirt solve this dilemma for the Cena character.

THE AUTHORITY is back in power this clearly means until Triple H and Stephaine McMan die they will be in charge of WWE dude WTF WWE

WTF at firing Dolph Ziggler, Ry Back and Erik Rowan, those are my favorite wrestlers and now I can never ever see them again? WTF!!!

Alicia Fox and her sorely underrated badassery were on display last night I've got no complaints

Also don't the Heels need to win so that they feel cocky and confident only for their fall to be that much more devastating?

Congrats to Rollamacka in the tag match with Ascension! #easypay

I mean, it's true.

I loved the earlier incarnation of the Ascension, but if they're going to do the same "beat up two random dudes off the street in 30 seconds" schtick for a year that they did in NXT, I couldn't possibly care less if they get buried on commentary. They were built up as this world-beating tag team in NXT, but 90% of their time was just beating up backyard wrestling looking guys. It's not even like THE RYBACK where their offense is impressive. They just punch and kick kind of hard, a lot.

Pretty sad he wasn't a cheeseburger Rosebud, but happy for him that he had a match on Raw.

And didn't get pinned.

ROLLERMACKA WORLD CHAMP 2015.

Seconded

JBL got all pissy over their comment about the Road Warriors. Lance Storm went and said he 'turned off' Raw.

It's funny to meet that this two guys take a scripted promo, and heels saying 'heelish' things so seriously, that JBL went crazy on commentary, basically shitting all over the Ascension. And Lance Storm went all pissy on Twitter.

And yet it is the same JBL that did a nazi marsh walk in Germany.

Oh, and classy move by WWE by the way. They fired Del Rio for fighting with someone over a racist joke, but they did nothing to JBL saying racial stuff against latinos in his so called 'rage' towards the Ascension.

None of them had any problems with Seth Rollins saying he will 'murder' Edge on Raw last week. None of them bitched and moaned about Punk pouring Paul Bearer's ashes at Taker. None of them bitched Punk mocked Lawler's heart attack. And yet here they are getting pissy over a heel comment about a tag team that's been irrelevant for over 15 years now.

Perhaps because the Road Warriors are so "irrelevant" these days, he was told to play it up on commentary as a terrible thing to say, in order to get them over as heels to kids who would otherwise watch and go "who are the Road Warriors? Whatever.... these guys are kinda cool"

But if JBL, who normally sides with the heels, derides them over the comment, these kids who don't know who the Road Warriors are will be "Whoa, I don't know who they are... but it sounds like that was a terrible comment to say! Boo! I hate these guys!"

After seeing that last night, I can't help but think that Rollins is walking out of the Rumble as champion. I think someone mentioned it a few pages back, but Cena pins Rollins to win the belt, Lesnar goes ape on Cena, Rollins cashes in and wins.

If Rollins was an over baby like Bryan was last year, I would save the cash in for Wrestlemania. But with Rollins as the mega heel, no way do you make that cash in at WM.

But isn't their promo already a heelish promo? He didn't put them over as heels at all, in fact he made them look stupid. He is a heel commentator, and this guys are heels, and all of a sudden he does a face turn just so he can call them out on their promo, and the fact that the Ascension is wrestling nobodies. It's almost equivalent to him say 'by the way, everything you see here is fake'. And by the way a line like: 'They couldn't carry the Road Warriors bags' sounds like the guy was whining and not actually trying to put them over. Hell, they didn't call anything in the match. The called the 'Fall of Man' in the goddamn recap of that match.

It means that the WWE basically wrote that promo for both of those guys, and than told the commentators: 'go ahead and shit on them and there promo'. I wouldn't be surprised if that was a 'f*ck you, Triple H and NXT' thing going on behind the scenes.

it was a shit promo either way

It doesn't excuse the terrible commentating.

Can you be ANY MORE childish than this? :|

absolutely. but that doesn't change the fact that regardless of commentary, the promo was absolute garbage. even if it had been delivered well (which it wasn't), the content was awful. i hope they have better plans with them moving forward.

Regardless the case.... it was always bad news whenever The Ascension talked in NXT... they are much better when they are just destroying people.

And put over by the commentators as beasts.

If they skipped over the promo and just killed blue singlet midget while the commentators talked about how they "dominated NXT" and are "extremely tough dudes", would have been better for all around.

I really think NXT needs to be brought into "canon" a bit more. Like you could have video packages of them destroying people on NXT, and give people more of a reason to instantly care about these guys and take them seriously. As opposed to trying to build them all over again. (I mean, obviously you would still need to build them over again, but the history would help)

Here's the thing, the writing is not their fault, but the guys who wrote this stuff behind the scenes. The fact that the guys who wrote have them mention Demolition and Road Warriors is stupid. Because the moment they wrote that promo they made the Ascension seem like the Warriors wannabes.

The booking of them was horrible. First match on Raw they defeated Miz and Mizdow, and than the next night on Raw they are fighting jobbers. Why? Isn't that some sort of depush for them, going from facing former Tag Team Champions, to facing two jobbers (well, mostly one jobber) the next week? Isn't that contradicting?

And the way they do it with the NXT taping, where the Ascension just keeps on losing, isn't it kind off damaging the Ascension? Because those who watch NXT see this guys get their face smashed by Balor and Itami, and yet we're supposed to believe that on Raw they are this dominating Tag Team?

If it was done right, the Ascension's recording on NXT would've been scrapped. So that way it won't look terrible on them. But instead, the booking, the tapings, the writing, basically everything from the moment they debuted on the main roster was pure terrible. And JBL on commentary basically killed them in front of millions of people who watch Raw live. That was the final nail in the coffin.

Unless, off course, if it turns out to be an APA vs. Ascension build up. Than it would make some sense, but I just don't think that they will bring in Faarooq for one night only to get squashed by Viktor and Konnor. I don't see that happening.

lol the final nail in the coffin. it was their second main roster appearance. relax.

3rd. If you count their Main Event match.

No. They are done forever professionally.

Kinda with Noya on this. No matter how you might feel about Ascension or their promo, it's never a good idea to shit all over someone on commentary in only their second match on the main roster.

Remember how much The Usos were jerked around before getting where they are today?

Where are they?

Were they shat on by THE WHOLE commentary team in one of their matches?

Cole didn't.

tag team of 2014 and two time tag team champions. Plus one has a hot wife.

I can agree with these points, and appreciation for the well-developed response.

But, really, if they make it a year, no one's really going to remember this shitty four minute segment (sorry Rollermacka!). If it becomes endemic and happens every single night, then we can jump to BURRRRRIED status.

It may not have been their "fault" to say that, and while it was a dumb segment that was arguably made worse by JBL burying them... It's still stupid as hell to have two guys say they're better than some legendary teams in the business, and then beat up a fat midget in a blue singlet with no name in 30 seconds like it's a big deal. You can try and sell that as a big deal, but it's going to be faceitious and forced.

I can't believe this is still a thing. It was a stupid promo and a stupid reaction. It happened; maybe it'll be their gimmick. Maybe no one will remember it in a month. This isn't like Shockmaster tripping on the set or Mark Henry being the father of a hand. We've seen way worse. Their gimmick isn't dead because JBL rode some stupid comment into the ground. They're going to be more in trouble if they just keep beating up Rollermacka's distraction midgets for two more years with stiff-lite offense.

My big issue with it is this: first off, it's a guy named Konnor talking tough. How intimidating...

secondly, it's not like they can use their remarks to set up a program to get put over by the Road Warriors. I somehow doubt they're going to bury the hatchet with Bill Eadie so that Demolition can job to them.

Third, they should WELCOME comparisons to those two teams, even if they don't compare favorably to them. I mean, Demolition was one of the top teams in the '80s, and rivaled Hogan himself in popularity. Road Warriors were one of the biggest attractions in history of the business.

In essence, don't mention a former attraction to get heat like that unless you're talking about being bigger than they ever were.

The whole wwe has been PrettyAwful lately. I rarely watch Raw anymore. Probably gonna watch the Rumble and Rasslemania but after that I may think about dumping the WWE network and get MLB TV instead. Tigers wooooooo!

Pfffffftttt. The dude has been given loads of angles. He was a mostly mute brute who did the bidding of Bray Wyatt, then he had a fascination with Renee for 2 weeks, then he hated bullies and had a genius IQ for 2 weeks. Loads of angles/characteristics.

This might be part of the pessimism; we know - absolutely KNOW - that John "Teflon" Cena won't be affected by any of this. Nothing, NOTHING, sticks when it comes to Cena.

This time could be different but chances are it won't be.

Dunno. They should do what they did on NXT; they need to be established to the wider audience as a dominant team. They will already rush things with The Asension; The Usos have the belts back with the express purpose of dropping them to Konnor/Victor, then what? They've conquered the mountain after a couple months, now what?

Well if this potential lives up to half of the major shift in Cena's character that occurred when he lost to The Rock then WE ARE IN FOR A TREAT!

Really, I don't have that much of a problem with the firings outside of it being kind of overdone. But how many times are we supposed to think "this is the beginning of soething huge" and have the guys involved be in the same position a month or two later before it becomes pretty obvious that the writers' ADD will kick in and nothing will come from it. How can you be hopeful in the potential of something WWE does anymore. Fuck potential. I wanna actually SEE some stuff come from potential first before it excites me in the least.

Survivor Series was supposed to be a huge breakthrough moment for Ziggler. It was a couple weeks before the guy that match built up as "Mr. All Heart, Never Say Die" was getting screwed out of matches and losing in 8 minutes on Raw again.

I'm intrigued how they bring back the "fired" guys. Do you have a stand-in ala The Yes Movement this time lead by Cena taking over the ring?

Does the Authority give them one more chance to try and win Rumble to save their jobs since it's "Best for Business" ? That would at least add another layer to Rumble that lacks stories minus Roman or Bryan.

Sting involved in bringing them back?

When they do come back, especially Dolph and to an extent Ryback, will be over HUGE heading into Mania season. That was my one wish in this whole Survivor Series deal was that Dolph got put over enough to get a big one on one match at Mania. Dude has earned it.

Apart from my joking about the Machines, I'd do it like this:

Have them take part in a triple threat match for their job back and one spot in the Rumble. Whoever wins (read: Ziggler) will celebrate getting their job back, only to find out their spot in the Rumble is... Number 1.

The Ryback should make life just miserable enough for Rusev that Lana DEMANDS that they bring him back just so her charge can take care of him, once and for all.

As for Rowan... fuck him, he sucks.

yeah i bet it will be sting they will be part of team sting, if they want to go back wcw wargames have team sting vs team hyman

I really liked when JBL debuted on Smackdown and Tazz said that he couldn't hold Ted DiBiase's bag.

I get both sides of The Ascension thing. It felt to me like JBL was just trying to make them sound despicable. I think the most annoying thing about them so far is that their NXT history hasn't been mentioned. Why not point out that they are the longest running NXT champions of any sort in that brand's history? Try and use them to get people to get the WWE Network and watch NXT.

I'm not sure how Dolph Ziggler, Erick Rowan and Ryback get their jobs back, but the only one I am especially interested in is Dolph Ziggler. I was hoping we'd get Cena vs. Cesaro at this year's WrestleMania, but right now, Cena vs. Ziggler seems like the bigger deal. Maybe Ziggler attacks Cena during the Rumble and costs him his shot at the WWE World Title?

I'm more interested in Cesaro and Tyson Kidd as a tag team. I would actually like to see them be the heel duo that takes the titles from The Usos.

legit lol'd