The ONE Department WWE Needs To Get Rid Of…
After too much of this, Bálor raised the crowd from the dead by flipping out of a shoulderbreaker and flattening Lashley with a gorgeous somersault plancha. This excitement subsided instantly because, in WWE, a dive signals the incoming commercial break.
By the time we returned, live, to Monday Night RAW, Lashley had resumed control, presumably having created separation from his opponent. Lashley resumed control with, yes, another nerve hold, before taking us slightly forward in time with a waistlock takedown. The arena fell to a hush. One guy shouted UN-DER-TA-KER!. A few people clapped. Finn started to, in the words of Michael Cole, who must be absolutely sick of saying them, “build momentum”. Finn did so, using elusive creativity, by planting Lashley with a backdrop and backwards-travelling chest stomp.
By the time the crowd had tuned out, it was Lashley’s turn to demonstrate something vaguely unique to his freakishly strong character; he caught a leapfrogging Bálor mid-flight, and slammed him to the canvas. Bálor fired back with the hits, but it was all damningly formulaic, wrestled with little urgency or hatred.
This match echoed Bálor’s prior programme with Constable Corbin, which was also bereft of any imagination, and the longer this mundane sh*t goes on, the more crowds will receive Bálor—an outstanding act in New Japan, to be clear—as a mundane performer.
And later in the night, Elias and Jinder Mahal had a f*cking match.
Like Lashley, Jinder charged Elias into the corner. Like Lashley, Jinder assumed the advantage with basic kicks and power moves. Like Lashley, Jinder applied a boring hold—a chinlock, obviously—to his babyface opponent. The crowd was dead. likely because they see this sh*t every. Single. Week. That’s not really an exaggeration. RAW, in 2018, is rubbish.
WWE was such an awesome place on Sunday. The Evolution pay-per-view was outstanding as a result of its diversity. Affectionate, nostalgic action that flattered the babyfaces; a whirlwind six-woman tag that flattered the babyfaces; a fiercely competitive, seesawing joshi-style blinder; a gruesome, wrenching idealisation of the babyface/heel dynamic; a classic Last Woman Standing match that didn’t go through the motions but registered every last second of the action to extract a very rare, human response; a unique hybrid of WWE-style heat and hijinks and sh*t-kicking MMA offence: Evolution was amazing.
But Evolution was rendered a TakeOver-style anomaly just 24 hours after it aired.
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