21th September Edition Of The Monday Night Raw & Wrestling News

Raw opened with The Group Known As Retribution showing how dastardly they are, by messing with the WWE intro and putting VHS effects on a digital file. They’re actions know no bounds. And apparently they have no bounds officially, as the commentators revealed Retribution have WWE contracts and can do whatever they want, whenever they want. The group whose sole mission is to destroy WWE, have been hired by WWE. Cool. This group threw molotov cocktails, broke windows with cinder blocks and tore up a ring with a chainsaw, and WWE thought to themselves, better sign them to contracts and pay them. They also took off their masks to reveal themselves as Bane, Casey Jones, the baddie from Mad Max Fury Road, and a couple of anti-mask protesters who are super angry at Walmart staff and post selfies online to own the libs. We also found out later they’ve got new names, and they’re just as lame as you thought they would be. Dominick Dijavoick has been renamed to T-Bar, Dio Maddin is now Mace, and Shane Thonre is… Slapjack. This is DOA levels of lame. I went to WWE.com to see if Mia Yim and Mercedez Martinez have new names, but they’re still just listed as themselves, which shows you how seriously WWE are taking this angle, I guess.

Hurt Business came out for a fight, and a match was made for later on. This was not a good debut for the group. I know they’ve been around for months, but this is the first time we’ve seen their faces and have a match, but it all feels so lame and try hard. And the plothole of these guys getting WWE contracts is simply ludicrous.

Speaking of storylines that suck and Andrade and Angel Garza are now back on the same page. WHY?! Well, at least they’ll probably implode in the triple threat tag match against Seth Rollins & I’m Not Your Buddy Murphy Guy and Dominik Mysterio & Humberto Carrillo for a shot at the Street Profits. Because there is now way WWE would book that match aga-oh nope they won and will face The Street Profits for the Raw Tag Team Championship at Clash of Champions. Again. This is their eighth match in various combinations in the last nine weeks, and Garza has been having matches for the tag titles against the Street Profits since WrestleMania. I am so ready to move onto something new.

After battling him for years inside and outside of brutal matches like Hell in a Cell and a ladder match where one of them would be fired less than a year ago - Kevin Owens just welcomed Shane McMahon onto the KO Show and said it was all water under the bridge. Shane was there to promote the Raw Underground match between Braun Strowman and Yabba Dabba Kato. Braun The Train Man came out for a war of words, and Aleister Black attacked Owens.

Before the rematch between Drew McIntyre and Keith Lee it was Randy Orton vs. Drew McIntyre in an ambulance match for the WWE Championship at Clash of Champions. But if Keith Lee wins he’ll get the shot, but only if Orton can’t compete. But if Lee wins and Randy can compete than Orton still gets the shot and oh no I’ve gone cross eyed. Doesn’t matter anyway because the match ended in a DQ. Fun fact 4 out of 6 Keith Lee matches on Raw have ended in either a DQ or No Contest. Keith Lee deserves better.

Randy Orton cut a decent promo saying he was always going to be at Clash of Champions and he’ll win the title.

Mickie James took on Zelina Vega for a shot at Asuka at the PPV, with the commentators basically skipping over the botch finish of last week’s match. Vega won the short encounter, which is her first singles win in WWE since 7th August 2018.

Bianca Belair showed how strong she was in a video package, and R-Truth did some comedy with the 24/7 title that, I think, ended with Akira Tozawa being eaten by a shark. If you can’t tell, I was not into this episode of Raw. And it didn’t get much better.

We got a decent match between Apollo Crews and Cedric Alexander, the former of which will be challenging Bobby Lashley for the United States Championship this Sunday. Cedric distracted himself by looking at Ricochet, and Crews pinned him. Hurt Business attacked the good guys after the match. So they’re heels here, but faces against Retribution, I guess.

Dolph Ziggler beat Artro Roas in Raw Underground. At least I think he did, it was shot so poorly.

And then Seth Rollins came out for a promo in a segment of two halves. The first half was exceptionally terrible, with Rollins revealing to the Mysterio family that Dominik wasn’t in fact Rey’s son because Rollins did a DNA test like he’s Jeremy Kyle. Oh no wait, no, sorry I appear to be reading my Raw notes from 15 years ago when Eddie Guerrero and Rey did this storyline. Amazingly, I’m not kidding. They tried to rerun this story. But then, they didn’t. Instead Rollins said the DNA test was wrong and that Aliyah isn’t Rey’s daughter because she showed compassion for Murphy last week. Rey cut a promo for Aliyah, who got upset and walked off, and Rollins apologized as he didn’t mean to break up this family - even though he clearly did. Look, all the Rey isn’t Dominik’s father stuff was nonsense, but the Aliyah stuff and Rollins’ reaction was actually pretty good. And Aliyah’s acting later in the show when - ALL THE MYSTERIO FAMILY STANDING IN A ROW - was really nice, as was her reaction to Murphy apologizing to her. I'm... kind of into this storyline.

Nia Jax and Shayna Baszler quickly beat Natalay and Lana, and then put Lana through a table.

Riddick Moss beat Erik of Viking Raiders in Raw Underground, and Zelina Vega caused a DQ between Asuka and Peyton Royce to build their match this Sunday.

The big Raw Underground match this week was Braun vs. Yabba Dabba Kato. Man, they’ve done a lot to build this Kato kid, they’ve clearly got some big plans for him-nope wait, Braun just won. That’s that I guess. I hate Raw Underground as much as Tim Quick hates Rick Thunder. And Tim Quick really hates Rick Thunder.

And in the main event, Retribution of T-Bar, Mace and Slapjack took on The Hurt Business. Hey guess what? WWE don’t want to beat Retribution in their first match, and don’t want Hurt Business to lose. But they booked them in a match anyway. So you know what they did? DQ! This was the third DQ of the night, and it was probably the lamest one, when Dio Maddin - I think he’s Mace? - punching Lashley when he wasn’t the legal man. That is so forking lazy. A brawl broke out between Retribution and the Raw locker room - at least I think it did, it was shot so poorly - and Orton laid out Drew with an RKO to end the show.

This was not a good episode of Raw. What did you think of the Monday night raw show? Let us know in the comments. It wasn’t just the lameness of Retribution, it wasn’t just Garza and Andrade continuing to feud with Street Profits, it was just the first half of the Rollins and Dominik Mysterio stuff, it wasn’t just Lee losing by DQ again, it wasn’t just Raw Underground, it wasn’t just the three lame DQ finishes. There was so little good on this show, and it was a horrible build to the PPV this weekend.

Wrestling News

Earlier this year in June during the Performance Center era of WWE programming, there was an outbreak of Covid-19, with a reported 30+ cases within the company. Wrestlers were barred from publicly revealing whether they had tested positively, but other on-screen personnel such as Kayla Braxton, Renee Young and Adam Pearce all revealed they had. It was this outbreak that forced WWE to change their testing methods from temperature checks and a questionnaire to actually testing for the virus itself. But despite this change, it appears that it may not have been enough to prevent another outbreak, this time down in NXT. NXT has continued to tape episodes from Full Sail University instead of transferring to the ThunderDome like the main roster, and it’s now been reported by Jon Alba, and corroborated by Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful Select, that an outbreak in NXT did in fact take place, sometime “over the past couple of weeks.” The outbreak forced WWE to change creative plans, and according to Alba, some people within Full Sail have “gotten relaxed with mask wearing, especially in spots where some people congregate and there was concern over that." Alba proceeded to state that individuals had still been trying positive "as of late as this end of the week, with the conviction being a mentor unintentionally spread it." It's not yet known how many people have been affected by this outbreak, but it’s a damning indictment of continuing programming during a pandemic, when even a full and proper testing regime may not be enough to prevent an outbreak.

Speaking of the Thunderdome and this week saw a full debut of The Group Known As Retribution, and we’ll come onto that in a bit, and it looks like they’re in for a big main event push. Wrestling news is reporting that this year’s Survivor Series will be headlined by Retribution vs Team WWE. A group of invaders from NXT taking on Team WWE in an elimination match. Nope, can’t see that going wrong. Interestingly there are five members of the group - with three lads and two lasses - so could this be our first inter-gender Survivor Series main event? What we need to put a stop to Retribution is a big WWE return, someone who can come back and put a stop to their dastardly ways. …or, you know, him.

As per Wrestling News, "Robert Roode, who's been away for quite a long time, is required to re-visitation of RAW inside the following week or two, potentially even today." As he didn't return on last night’s episode, we can expect him the next couple of weeks, probably on Raw Underground or something. Can’t wait. Roode has been out of action since lockdown as he was stranded in Canada, unable to travel to the USA, but now he’s...able to I guess?