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WWE Raw Recap – Jeff Hardy Teaches Steel Stairs a Lesson w/ His Head

I'm Jude Terror, and this is The Shovel: WWE Raw Edition, a weekly torture I inflict on myself out of… what? Habit? Duty? Stockholm Syndrome? Whatever the reason, I watch WWE Raw, all seventeen hours of it, and recap it in three succinct articles (because I gotta get paid) for your reading pleasure. Tonight's Raw begins the build toward TLC, taking place on December 20th.

WWE Raw Recap for November 30th, 2020 Part 1

After the Raw opening theme performed by Costco-brand Eminem and a brief rundown of tonight's card, such as it is, Raw cuts right to the ring where Alexa Bliss is ready to host A Moment of Bliss. She's sitting criss-cross applesauce on a chair in the ring and invites Randy Orton out to take the other seat. Orton obliges. Bliss accuses him of being grumpy.

Do you think Alexa Bliss acting like a six-year-old makes her simp fans less or more interested? I'm going with more. Alexa plays a clip of The Fiend messing with Orton last week. "I cannot believe he did that to you," she says after the clip. "But have you ever asked yourself why he did that to you?"

Orton claims to know Bray Wyatt well, but he hasn't been formally introduced to The Fiend yet. Even so, Orton says he and The Fiend have a lot in common. The one main difference is that The Fiend wears his pain and suffering on the outside, while Orton is a grower, not a shower. Orton starts quoting the lyrics of his entrance theme as this promo goes off the rails.

Orton rambles on a little longer until he basically gets to the point that he's gonna beat up Alexa to get to The Fiend. Alexa just laughs at him. She gets in his face and asks him: "who's manipulating who?" The Fiend's lighting and audio cues happen very slowly until the lights finally go out. When they come back on, Orton is cradling Alexa in his arms, and The Fiend is crawling into the ring. The Fiend slowly approaches Orton and puts his hands out for Orton to hand over Alexa. Orton creeps closer, and The Fiend takes her.

Orton slides out of the ring and backs up the ramp. "Who's laughing now? Who's laughing now?!" No one, Randy. Laughing would mean someone was entertained here, and I can assure you nobody was entertained. Apparently, this segment was meant to show that The Fiend does care about Alexa. I guess? WWE will probably just drop the whole thing in a couple of weeks anyway.

Commentary acts like they just watched Owen fall from the rafters. Still, they manage to pull it together and start shilling for the next segment anyway, a "Symphony of Destruction" match between Jeff Hardy and Elias. Personally, I'm in favor of more matches based on thirty-year-old Megadeth songs. Raw takes a commercial break.

Commentary shills for NXT Takeover WarGames, and then we get a video package for Drew McIntyre's championship reign. Then Jeff Hardy comes out. There are a bunch of drums and guitars on the stage and in the ringside area, and I guess the point of the match is to hit your opponent with them. Though personally, I think this match would be a lot cooler if Elias and Hardy had to jam out and write a song together.

Elias comes out eventually, and they have this match. Lots of musical instruments are broken. Elias slams Hardy on a piano at one point, and it turns out R-Truth is sleeping in the piano. A bunch of jobbers come running out, and some of them get beaten with guitars by Hardy and Elias as Raw takes a commercial break.

After the break, they do a spot where Elias puts several guitar picks in-between his fingers and then punches Hardy with it. This move doesn't physically make any sense. They do some more instrument spots: drums, a gong, more guitars, and then a spot where Elias misses Hardy and puts a shard of a broken guitar through a speaker prompting lots of sparks to fly. More instrument spots, and then Hardy puts Elias on a table outside, pies a bunch of violins on it, and hits a Swanton from the top of the ringpost, and smacks the back of his head on the steel stairs. I guess he looks okay, though. Thank god he landed with his head.

Jeff Hardy defeats Elias via pinfall.

"Riddle" talks to Keith Lee backstage about the Triple Threat they're in later tonight. Someone saw Riddle's old character and thought to themself, "this could be way more obnoxious," and then made it happen. And that person was Vince McMahon. Riddle blathers on, and Lee slips away while he's talking. Raw goes to commercials.

Oh, hey, Retribution are still around. Mustafa Ali cuts a promo on Ricochet about how Ricochet's career is going nowhere, so he should join Retribution so all their careers can go nowhere together. Slapjack steps up and says Ali showed him the way, and now nobody sees him as a joke anymore. Er…

Anyway, Slapjack is gonna fight Ricochet tonight. Ricochet comes to the ring. They play a prerecorded promo from him, too, but, and I'm asking you honestly here, does anyone care what he said? Raw takes another commercial break. Then Slapjack comes out, and they have a match. The match sucks. The rest of Retribution runs out to interfere, but then Dana Brooke shows up and slaps Mustada Ali in the face. Ricochet single-handedly beats up everyone in Retribution, but that let's Slapjack hit his finishing move, which I'm calling the Ookie Cookie until WWE gives it an official name and gets the win.

Slapjack defeats Ricochet via pinfall after hitting the Ookie Cookie.

Raw takes a commercial break, and this is as good a time as any for us to cut over to part two of this report. See you there if you dare!

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