RAW Review 11/4/14

(Or "If Only This Happened Some Time Ago...")

By Speed on the Beat

Now, I'm not going to go through play-by-play. You can get that on WINC, PWTorch, WZ, or a myriad of other places. I will, however, speak on three (major) happenings of last night's episode. The overall feeling I had while watching was "if only this happened earlier, then I'd probably care more."

Vince McMahon returned last night to give The Authoritah an ultimatum. Win at Survivor Series or...

I won't complain about Vince appearing, since Vince is, even when he's being a senile a-hole glory hog (sometimes, he really seems like this), gold. However, the "Authority screwing over everyone who isn't in their Fav Five" storyline ran its course around the time that Stephanie and Brie Bella had their bitchfest. Over the past few months, it's gotten stale.

Yes, out of it, we got Ambrose/Rollins and the PG Era's answer to the Foley HIAC spot. However, that's really about it in terms of character development or, you know, things that will maintain interest for the unwashed masses. McMahon's return was needed months ago. If only the WWE stock/behind-the-scenes stuff wasn't as hectic as Wall Street makes it out to be. That way, we probably would've seen this storyline end, Orton go back to crazy tweener, and Daniel Bryan return in time for WM 31.

Speaking of Orton, Orton kind of reverted back to that crazy tweener...only to get his head curbstomped by Seth Rollins.

H/T wwe.com. Can we please, however, stop the B&W
whenever blood appears filter? It only makes it more apparent.

I applaud WWE's decision to show a plethora of dissension within the ranks of The Authority (which leads me to believe the angle is ending around Survivor Series). I also applaud WWE allowing Orton to not full-on revert to "Face Orton." No one, not even Randy himself, wants that. However, I still couldn't help but feel that this has dragged on for longer than needed. It's been about seven months since Randy's discontent with The Authority has started to shine through. I'm not calling for Vince Russo-level booking, where everything happens at break-neck speed. However, had this tease gone on long enough, I would've left it alone and gave zero you-know-whats about it.

And finally, the big news. Rusev is your United States Champion.

Y'know, if this were in the middle of the Cold War or even a couple months ago, it'd be a better move. However, now? It's kind of "ok, the big, bad 'Russian' won. Let's build him up to feed him to Cena at some point." It's still heat worthy. But, at the same time, it feels long overdue. What will the future hold for Rusev? If Hulk's tweets are indicative of anything, John Cena will at some point, feud with Rusev over the US Belt (maybe to give it some of that "legitimacy" the Internet loves to gawk over). Maybe it's because the belt was on Sheamus for so long that I stopped giving a crap, but all I could muster at this development was "oh, word? Um...alright then."

Until next time (maybe not next week, but we'll see).
-Speed on the Beat