Last Night's WWE Raw Was The Worst EVER (According To The Internet)
...and it gets ever worse than that (!)
WWE fans, at least those who help curate consensus opinion via the cagematch.net database, believe last night's episode of Monday Night Raw to be the worst of all time.
Of course, it should be noted that this is a somewhat flawed metric. Perhaps even very flawed. Recency bias tends to influence match and show ratings to a major extent, as fans, wounded, are obviously going to register their disgust impulsively when at their most furious. Moreover, it is a very in-depth if niche site frequented by significantly fewer people than actually watch the show.
Still, if the sample is even somewhat reflective of the full viewership base, it is hardly a good omen for Vince McMahon's reported return as a key creative influence.
At time of writing, the show is rated 0.90...
...out of 10.
The protracted, incredibly McMahonian beat-down of Cody Rhodes by Brock Lesnar grabbed the only, suboptimal headline on a night otherwise received as a total nothing show on which very little actually happened. No NXT stars nor hot free agents were debuted in front of the most receptive crowd of the year. More of the same was the theme - Rey Mysterio continued his feud with son Dominik, Damage CTRL continued to feel as weak as any WWE stable ever - and "more of the same" felt especially brutal in the case of that Brock/Cody angle. Brock Lesnar as the over-powered Final Boss was McMahon's antagonistic calling card for years and years, and he is back at his most dominant self.
Riddle returned, but that was a case of rearranging old furniture. He didn't target the Bloodline, either, which made no sense from a continuity standpoint (you've all been here before, haven't you)?
The in-ring action was kept to a minimum. Monsters on the rampage was another recurring Vince motif in the undercard; Omos won a squash in another very Vince-like attempt to erase the events of a show he had just promoted 24 hours prior.
It was not only the worst episode of WWE Raw of all-time; according to the internet, for now, it is the fourth worst professional wrestling show ever held.
It, apparently, was only better than a season three edition of the original NXT, on which the misogyny at the heart of WWE was laid bare to particularly cruel effect. The April 3, 2023 Raw was only a slight improvement on Heroes of Wrestling, infamously the worst PPV ever.
Last night's Raw was also narrowly beaten by the two worst WWE Saudi shows, Crown Jewel 2018 and Super Show-Down 2020, at which, respectively, DX Vs. Brothers of Destruction was a calamity of schadenfreude and Goldberg knocked the Fiend's d*ck in the dirt.
There's no word on what Vince thought of the reception to Raw, but knowing him, he might have laughed it off.