Being a fan of pro-wrestling in the internet age means there’s very few actual, genuine surprises anymore. Thanks to dirt sheets and news websites, you often know exactly who’s going where, working for what company, and when they’ll be showing up. So when the big companies manage to pull of genuine surprises, it makes them all the more brilliant.
On yesterday’s edition of the WWE‘s flagship TV show – the gargantuan 3 hour, weekly, live monolith that is Monday Night Raw – a genuine surprise was had, and it was genuinely pretty awesome.
Amongst an otherwise slightly above par Raw, which balanced the genuinely brilliant (Damian Sandow‘s beyond genius “mimic everything the Miz does without exception” stunt double gimmick, another scary-as-shit Wyatt Family vignette, and the general presence of Dean Ambrose who is a goddamned STAR) with the genuinely terrible (Adam Rose sipping wine with the Today Show hosts, the El Torito vs Mini Gator clusterfuck, and the continued insistence of the Divas division to learn a flying head scissors before they learn a hammerlock) we got the continuation of the Big Show vs Rusev angle, in which Rusev and accomplice Lana would come down and address the fact that Big Show kind of desecrated the Russian flag on last week’s Raw. In doing so, they ran through the stock standard “Evil Russians” talking points – America sux, Putin rulez, you all will be crushed by Rusev. As far as Rusev angles goes, it was nothing too out of the ordinary.
And then The Rock showed up.
Legitimately and coincidentally in New York on the same day that Raw happened to be swinging through Brooklyn‘s Barclay’s Centre, the man known outside the squared circle as Dwayne Johnson stopped by for a last-minute segment with WWE’s latest remnant of an angle from the 80s.
Take away thoughts:
– Save for referencing the insertion of a shiny sideways object somewhere unpleasant, all the requisite Rock catch phrases were ticked off.
– Rock’s trademark sexually demeaning comments towards female characters remain ever-present.
– His travel schedule through New York’s five boroughs that day was wildly inefficient.
– Calm Rock is fine, but it ain’t no coked-up Hollywood Rock calling Goldberg a “whisker biscuit bald-headed bitch.”
– God damn, coked-up Hollywood Rock was great.
– The “IT DOESN’T MATTER…” cut off still rules, even after the 10,000th time.
– Just a few punches? No Elbow? Or at least a spinebuster? Come on.
– Despite any and all misgivings, this was still fantastic.
