Posted in: Sports, TV, WWE | Tagged: Raw, recaps, The Shovel, wrestling, wwe

WWE Raw Recap – Mustafa Ali vs. Ricochet, Too Little Too Late?

On WWE Raw this week, if Mustafa Ali and Ricochet had an epic match, but nobody was around to care, did it really happen?

I'm Jude Terror, and this is The Shovel: WWE Raw Edition. WWE suffered a major blow last weekend when WWE Hall-of-Famer Donald Trump lost the election to Joe Biden. Big loss for WWE. Big loss for Vince McMahon. And another big loss for Linda McMahon, who was heading up that super PAC for Trump. On the bright side, that does mean Trump is free to make a return to the company, and lord knows they could use some more star power. Should we pencil in an early Survivor Series return? Or do we need to wait for the Royal Rumble? It does come right after the inauguration…

WWE Raw Recap for November 9th, 2020 Part 2

Retribution came to the ring before a commercial break. After the break, Mustafa Ali gets a match with Ricochet. It's pretty sad that the only reason WWE matches aren't totally predictable is when both opponents are jobbers, so you don't know which one is more likely to lose.

They actually have a pretty good match, which almost makes me feel bad about calling them both jobbers. Almost. The fact is, both of these guys are incredibly talented, but they've both been booked so miserably over the past year that they have zero credibility. You can't just put the two of them into a match after that and expect people to care when they've been conditioned to believe neither wrestler will ever amount to anything in WWE.

Anyway, as it turns out, the bigger jobber of these two is Ricochet, who taps out to a Koji Clutch.

Mustafa Ali defeats Ricochet to win the title of the second-biggest jobber on Raw.

Randy Orton talks to Adam Pearce backstage. Pearce tells Orton he has to defend his title against Drew McIntyre next week. Orton jacks Pearce up against the wall. He tells him to tell the Raw creative team to go to hell—Randy Orton: hero of the people.

Orton comes out to the ring as WWE prepares to fill the rest of the show with entrances and then a meaningless 6-man tag match. Raw takes a commercial break. Miz and Morrison come out after that. Then Kofi Kingson and Xavier Woods. And finally, Drew McIntyre.

They have a match. The match is designed, as most WWE six-man matches are, to ensure that nobody particularly stands out from anyone else. Everyone gets their share of offense in at some point. I will give the match this: it deviates slightly from the formula by having Randy Orton refuse to tag in during the match, instead of standing at ringside and scowling at Drew McIntyre until the end.

Eventually, McIntyre beats John Morrison's ass so bad that Orton almost considers tagging in. McIntyre begs him, and Orton comes close but then decides to grab his belt and leave instead. McIntyre hits a Claymore on Morrison and stares at Randy while he pins him.

Drew McIntyre, Kofi Kingston, and Xavier Woods defeat Randy Orton, Miz, and Morrison.

Raw goes off the air with these words from Drew McIntyre to Randy Orton: "Next week, your ass belongs to me!"

As usual, Raw was far from impressive tonight. Of all of WWE's weekly shows, Raw is inarguably the worst and the most boring. There is zero energy behind this show at all. It's not for lack of talent in the performers, most of whom are actually really good. Even the angles that I think "work" in general, like Hurt Business's ascension, are hard to enjoy because the show itself is so painful to watch.

The problem is that WWE has about enough creativity for maybe two hours of wrestling a week, but they need to produce a minimum of seven. Furthermore, Raw's three-hour format is grueling, in large part because WWE writes it like they would a two-hour show and just stretches out each of the segments to fill the extra hour. This extra hour's worth of slowed pacing is brutal. It's misery to watch this show every week, and I don't see it getting better any time in the near future.

But on the bright side, at least Raw goes first in the week, so it's over with nice and early, and we can enjoy the rest of what the wrestling world has to offer. Tomorrow is Impact, and they've got a bunch of interesting storylines going on, so I promise a less depressing edition of The Shovel if you check back here tomorrow.

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