The Manchester Arena hosts the 11/5/18 edition of Monday Night RAW as we enter the broadcast with a newly crowned Universal Champion.
He’s not there of course, and just like the majority of us, they apparently aren’t big fans of “Crown Jewel”, the booking and the presentation as a whole, as the boos rained down with the recap of this past week’s pay per view.
Acting RAW GM, Baron Corbin, announces that in the main event tonight, he’ll take on Kurt Angle and the winner of that match will captain RAW’s five man team as they take on Smackdown at Survivor Series. Dolph Ziggler and Braun Strowman are announced as members of the team. Corbin spends most of the night running from Strowman who tries to get to him, but he escapes.
Alexa Bliss is also announced as the captain of the RAW women’s team, but she won’t compete as continues to nurse nagging injuries. She’ll be watching the women’s matches and scouting the competition to see who she wants to add to her team.
The Riott Squad and Natalya/Sasha Banks/Bayley is ruled a no contest.
Our first bout this evening ends without a decision as the match is tossed out after Ruby Riott destroys a pair of the legendary Jim Neidhart’s glasses, which infuriates Natalya and that leads to the match being thrown out. The faces console Natalya as her father passing away is a very sore subject and they are using it for story line heat.
Braun Strowman is backstage and he’s hunting Baron Corbin.
Apollo Crews defeats Jinder Mahal via pin fall after a standing moonsault.
Mahal had been roughed up earlier in the night thanks to Braun Strowman, as Mahal stood in the way for Corbin and took one for the team. Crews is able to get to the pay window by taking advantage of the injury and he wins it with a standing moonsault.
Seth Rollins comes to the ring holding both the Intercontinental and World Tag Team Titles. He speaks about his Shield brother and good friend, former Universal Champion Roman Reigns, as he continues to fight the good fight against Leukemia.
Rollins is interrupted by Drake Maverick, and the 205 Live GM reveals that Rollins will be defending the title here tonight, the tag titles that is. He’ll be competing against AoP in a handicapped match.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ggaq4LU6yw&w=560&h=315]
AoP w/ Drake Maverick defeat Seth Rollins via pin fall with the Neckbreaker/Powerbomb combo to become the RAW tag team champions.
Rollins actually put up one heck of a fight as you’d expect, but in the end, the heels finally broke through that glass ceiling, coming away with championship gold after poor booking and months of floundering in the mid-card.
This was a great win for AoP and with Ambrose turning on Rollins, it was expected and it opens up opportunities for AoP to defend against Roode and Gable as well as the Revival and other teams. A great win for AoP and it’s good to see them with gold.
Rollins’ day got worse as he was viciously and savagely attacked by his former partner and friend, Dean Ambrose, following the match and he was planted in front of the Manchester crowd with a Dirty Deeds.
We get a recap of the Becky Lynch promo on Women’s champion, Ronda Rousey, and Rousey will respond later tonight.
Dolph Ziggler comes to the ring with a live mic and he begins a promo ranting about Shane McMahon not being the best in the world, but very quickly we transition into an opportunity to “walk with Elias” as the newly minted face interrupts him, endearing himself to the local crowd with a reference to Oasis, and it ultimately leads to singles action.
Elias defeats Dolph Ziggler via pin fall with Drift Away.
A competitive match with Ziggler getting in plenty of offense, but it’s Elias who comes away with the victory at the end of this as he takes advantage of a miss to hit Drift Away.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4CTJNUKOTA&w=560&h=315]
Raw women’s champion, Ronda Rousey, heads to the ring and she cuts a passionate promo about her forthcoming match with Smackdown women’s champion, Becky Lynch. Rousey is getting better on the mic each week and she references Lynch’s statement about “being the man”, but Rousey says she’s the baddest chick on the planet, and she doesn’t use the PG verbiage. That should be a very good match at Survivor Series and the crowd reacts well to Rousey.
It should be interesting to see how things play out, because even as a heel, Lynch is getting massive fan reactions each week.
Nia Jax defeats Ember Moon via pin fall.
This was a glorified squash and it did nothing for Ember Moon. This was quite disappointing to be honest as Jax continues to struggle with an offensive presentation and they basically buried Moon here, not good. After the match was over, the rumored alliance between Nia Jax and Tamina took shape as they proceeded to attack Moon. They hugged after it was over and left together.
Baron Corbin changes the RAW main event, stating that Kurt Angle will face Drew McIntyre in his stead as he takes his leave, further avoiding a confrontation with Braun Strowman after the belt shot he issued the “Monster Among Men” at “Crown Jewel”. If McIntyre wins, he’ll captain the RAW team.
Bobby Lashley defeats Finn Balor via pin fall with the Sideout Slam.
The weekly series continues as Lashley comes away with another victory at Balor’s expense this week. There was a hilarious “botch” where Lio Rush pulled a Bobby Heenan and was raving about Lashley’s physique when Lashley unintentionally mooned the crowd. Rush turned it into a focus on his “hamstrings” and it was pretty great.
Rush was key in the match as well, playing into the match’s end with sagely timed distractions which led to Lashley hitting the sideout slam for the victory.
It looks like Lashley will factor in to McIntyre’s plans as following the bout, McIntyre helps Balor up, only to hit him with a vicious Claymore kick. Balor is being criminally under-utilized and it seems that something needs to happen with him, and quickly, as the fans love him and they don’t know how to use him.
Drew McIntyre defeats Kurt Angle via submission with an ankle lock to win the right to captain the RAW Survivor Series Men’s team.
This was truly a showcase for the rising star in McIntyre.
At one point late in the match, he not only hit the Angle slam on Angle, calling him an embarrassment to his family, but he submitted him with his own move.
McIntyre mocked Angle, taunting him after the bout, while keeping the submission applied for a while longer. McIntyre made his way up the ramp, dominant, to send the show off the air.
