3 Ups & 7 Downs For WWE Raw (18 Aug - Results & Review)

5. ECW Was HOW LONG AGO?

Another Raw, another opening talking segment featuring The Vision that runs on too long and accomplishes little.

Paul Heyman was in all his glory being in Philadelphia, singing his own praises and repeatedly invoking ECW, a wrestling promotion that closed its doors before about half of the fans in attendance Monday night were born (anyone 24 and under), while the crowd chanted for a company probably three-quarters of them never watched.

To put that in perspective, that would be like Ric Flair during Evolution talking incessantly about his glory days in 1981, four years before the Four Horsemen even formed. Or Hulk Hogan at WrestleMania 3 waxing about Buddy Rogers becoming the first WWWF Champion in 1963.

Why is living a quarter-century in the past OK now when it was widely mocked and shunned for decades? Oh right, WWE killed all their competition, so it’s now acceptable to invoke “ancient” history ad nauseum.

Setting aside the memory lane part of the show-opening promo segment, this was just a good 10-15 minutes that only served to establish that the Philly fans in attendance have fallen off considerably. Jey Uso made fun of Bron Breakker, so Seth Rollins pumped Breakker up until they had to hold him back. Fine.

The only truly good spot came when Heyman mentioned Tommy Dreamer and noted that he’s not dead yet, and Bron was shocked that he’s still alive. Dreamer catching strays at Breakker’s expense was legit funny, but sitting through the same boring opener – with a hyper-produced, slickly choreographed WWE paying homage to a gritty, renegade promotion like ECW – was not a valid trade-off for one good Breakker one-liner.