Sami Zayn fell short in his WWE World Championship loss against Gunther on WWE Monday Night Raw. Peter Klein wonders what is next for him while breaking down the rest of the show.
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00:00Monday Night Raw, the two-hour variety, went down in St. Louis, Missouri.
00:11The show starts with CM Punk, and immediately I was like, man, okay, because you guys know,
00:18if you were listening, I was saying last, um, yesterday, I don't want CM Punk coming
00:23out and being fine, and I don't want Drew McIntyre, like, these guys need to sell the
00:28damages from this.
00:30And now, to that degree, CM Punk did a great job.
00:33He looked genuinely hurt, and looked very uncomfortable.
00:36I thought it was a good promo to just like, okay, this is putting a real bow on this,
00:42and we're moving on now, and it's off, it's in the past, and I'm moving forward, looking
00:47for a championship, and looking for a couple other things as well.
00:52Um, so that, I thought it did a good job of selling the injuries, it did a good job of
00:57just like, let's get this guy on TV, really show how much damage has been done, and now
01:02get him moving forward.
01:03And then, you plant the seeds when Seth Rollins come out.
01:07So that is, I think a, I thought it was a good use of time.
01:10And this was something they did throughout the show.
01:13And I think it was a way to kind of still get some of the storytelling done that you
01:18wanted to in three hours, and do it in two.
01:20Where you had a crossover of Punk leaving, and oh, in comes Seth Rollins, and then they
01:26did it again with Jey Uso.
01:29And like, you just had a lot of crossover with those guys at different times, and that
01:33helped to kind of string together a few different things, and also kind of visually pair up,
01:39alright, that guy with this guy, this guy with that guy, that guy over here, this and
01:42that.
01:43Like, you did a good job of, I think, kind of mixing and matching all of those things
01:46together.
01:47So, I thought that was, um, I thought that was a part of this show that they did really
01:51well.
01:52Seth Rollins comes out, he cuts a promo.
01:54It's a Seth Rollins promo.
01:56It's better than most promos you will see, but it doesn't get to the upper echelons of
02:01the epic promo doers of this generation.
02:05Like it's, it was a Seth Rollins promo, and he challenged Bronson Reed to a match, and
02:10thusly they will have a match at some point soon, I am sure.
02:13The Intercontinental title match was good.
02:15It wasn't a blowaway match, but I don't think it should have been.
02:18When you have Jey, who is still, like, solidifying himself as the Intercontinental champion,
02:24as an upper mid-card type of a performer, you don't need to have super competitive
02:28matches every night.
02:30And with the story that they are telling with Xavier Woods right now, I don't think this
02:33needed to be a five-star, drag-em-out classic.
02:37You give Xavier Woods a little bit of shine, and then Jey gets the win.
02:41And then after, Braun comes out, turns back into a monster.
02:44I thought that was really well done.
02:45And so there, again, in something that probably would have been two separate segments on a
02:50three-hour show, they got over the Kofi and Xavier feud, still, in this match.
02:55They got Braun back to being a monster.
02:58With this match, you got Jey a win.
03:00So you just, you did a whole lot in just one segment.
03:03So I thought they did a really, a really good job.
03:06We covered, like, four different things in the first, like, 30 minutes of the show.
03:09So I thought they did a good job with that.
03:12One of the things I didn't love was R-Truth coming in and saying, like, look, you forgot!
03:17I'm not in the Judgment Day anymore.
03:19And making it a bit of a jokey thing out of that.
03:21And I get we're, hopefully, fucking building to this thing, of this being serious.
03:28But I thought it kind of took away from the turn last week, that everyone saw it coming.
03:33And, you know, it was what it was.
03:35But I thought it took away from it a little bit, that Truth is like, oh man, you thought
03:38I was with the Judgment Day.
03:39And then Miz kind of gets it back on track, and that, you know, that was fine.
03:47Now they're setting up a match.
03:48And the, like, our kids play together line, I thought was an interesting one.
03:52And so I do wonder if we're going to start to see a little bit more seriousness out of
03:56this, potentially.
03:57But it doesn't really have me.
03:59I thought we had a good pre-match promo with Sheamus and Pete Dunn setting up their match.
04:03I thought they did a really, really school job.
04:06This one was a little old school, in a lame way.
04:08Like, not old school in a, oh wow, this is Terry Funk and it's bleeding and all these
04:12different things.
04:13This was old school in a, remember that time there was, like, dog food and pumpkins, and
04:18this guy wore a jack-o'-lantern, and it was that sort of, like, a Smackdown 2015 on a
04:23pre-taped Thanksgiving episode, or something like that.
04:27They did end up having a good match out of it.
04:30It was a bit more serious than what they used to do with those sorts of things.
04:33Like, the finish would have been, like, Pete Dunn drowning in booze, or something like
04:36that.
04:37So, this one, they at least treated it with a little bit more seriousness.
04:41This was one of the ones where Joe Tessitore, I thought, went a little bit over the top
04:45on it.
04:46And I think his energy for big moments is really good.
04:49And I like him in boxing a lot.
04:51And maybe he was a little bit too 100% all the time for Monday Night Football.
04:56But I do think for the wild world of college football, he's pretty good at it as well.
05:01And for WWE, I think the emotion and the energy that he brings to big moments is actually
05:05really, really good.
05:08But when it's not actually a big moment, and he's still going at it, it just, it's
05:11a little, eh.
05:12Like, he called Sheamus's win over Pete Dunn in the Donnybrook Brawl a historic win
05:17for Sheamus.
05:18It's like, yeah, he got his hands zip-tied, but this is a guy who's won multiple championships.
05:23And was pursuing the Intercontinental title because he would have been a Grand Slam champion.
05:30So, in terms of the historic nature of Sheamus's career, winning the Donnybrook Brawl on a
05:36Monday in October against Pete Dunn, ah, it's probably not going to crack the top
05:4050.
05:41So, I thought that was where Joe Tessitore was maybe being just a little bit over the
05:45top.
05:46Uh, we had our, and what is probably going to be a more constant thing, um, Get Everybody
05:51On TV match.
05:52A 10-woman tag.
05:54It didn't advance anything.
05:57And this is, I think, going to be, honestly, like, these, these were the performers that
06:03I was wondering about when Raw got cut from two hours to three.
06:06All 10 women.
06:08In this match.
06:09You just worry about, where are they going to fit?
06:11And we have seen, just throwing different iterations of them out in matches every single
06:16week, isn't going to build the storyline enough to get people to give a shit about
06:19any of this.
06:20So there needs to be a little bit more character development, or any type of investment that
06:25is something other than, oh, they had a six minute match, check.
06:28There needs to be a little bit something built into that, I believe.
06:32And then we get to the main event.
06:33It's Gunther taking on Sami Zayn.
06:34I thought this was a really, really good match.
06:36They are hindered by the fact that no one was taking it seriously.
06:39That Sami Zayn was going to beat Gunther.
06:41They're already promoting Gunther against Cody Rhodes for, um, Crown Jewel, as the,
06:46the Crown Jewel tournament, to win the 8 billion pound belt, and I, and so you just, you couldn't
06:53take it seriously.
06:54Both put on a really, really good show, and obviously, like, you, you get past this hurdle
06:59for Gunther now.
07:00Um, you, you give Zayn a bit of plausible deniability that he never gave up, he just
07:04got choked out, and so maybe we get another Rocky montage, or something, um, with him.
07:11I do hope that there is, I hope that Sami doesn't just fall down the card now.
07:17We have done, um, the booking to WrestleMania a couple of times on this show, and each time
07:24I have put Sami Zayn in the main event against Gunther again.
07:28I think that, like, obviously not THE main event, they're Rock and Roman Reigns and Cody
07:32and Punk and all them, but, um, in terms of being in the World Heavyweight Championship
07:36match, I think Sami Zayn has the claim to that right now, and I think you can build
07:40him kind of back up, in kind of the way I wanted them to build up here, where he's
07:44actually winning matches, and doing those things.
07:46I think you can build him back up into that challenger, so I'm very fascinated to see
07:50what they do next with him.
07:51But overall, like, Raw being two hours, blew by, man, I, like, you can zoom right through
07:56that thing.
07:57I thought it was a good show, I still think they hit a lot of the main beats, but the
08:01concerns about the kind of secondary and tertiary storylines, I think are warranted, and I think
08:07definitely there could be an improvement on that going forward.