18 Reasons Why Last Night's WWE Raw Was An Absolute Mess
It wasn't the WORST Raw ever, but it WAS a shambles.
Last night's WWE Raw was an absolute trainwreck of a show.
It was three of the most untidy, disorderly, and messy hours of television this company will produce all year. Angles and story developments were tossed out with little regard for how they'd resonate. Almost nothing worked, and while the four NXT arrivals carried Raw for many viewers, the bookers didn't exactly make the most of Tommaso Ciampa, Johnny Gargano, Ricochet, and Aleister Black.
Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised by how Raw turned out, as the usually-reliable WrestleVotes tweeted the following before the show:-
"Different" is definitely the right word for it. Not everything on this show sucked (though most of it did), and some of its oddities were morbidly entertaining, but the overwhelming feeling coming away from this show was that WWE had put swathes of ill-fitting, ill-conceived booking ideas into a randomiser, swirled them around a bit, and accepted the results with a shrug. Storytelling bedamned.
At it's best, last night's Raw veered into so-bad-its-good territory; at it's worst, it was an embarrassing production for a promotion of WWE's size and resources. Let's run through the things that made it such a shambles (in chronological order)...
18. D-Generation X... And Chyna
D-Generation X is heading to the WWE Hall of Fame! Check out their official #WWEHOF profile. https://t.co/vQmFTsFEqu
— WWE (@WWE) February 18, 2019
This D-Generation X Hall Of Fame induction is sneaky. Super sneaky.
The stable deserve their place, 100%. They are, without question, one of the most important factions in WWE history, a symbol of their most prosperous period, and still among the most over acts this company has ever produced. The reason that the 49-year-old embarrassing dad version of Road Dogg can still shamble out on Raw and say dumb sh*t like "shiznit" is because of the goodwill he accrued with DX 20 years ago, so yeah, nobody's disputing their validity.
That being said, the whole thing feels like WWE's way of inducting Chyna into the Hall without actually inducting her. The company are handling this controversial topic with kid gloves, and no matter where you stand on the issue, it's hard to dispute the shadiness.
Last night's induction video package focused primarily on the other DX members, despite Chyna's peak popularity, and the mid-show tweet came with a thumbnail that didn't even include her. They're skirting around the issue. Put the politics aside and go all-in on this introduction, or the moment will seem like a sham.