WWE Monday Night Raw: August 26th, 2019 “Cowboy” Round-Up

Public plea to WWE: Can we please make Clash of the Champions what Survivor Series currently is? Why isn’t Clash of the Champions a, you know, clash of the champions? Why can’t we go back to traditional Survivor Series 4 on 4 matches?

• Sasha Banks sure looks SASSY. Great cut to a 78 year old white woman awkwardly dancing to her theme.
• Sasha Banks is getting right now what I like to call “Wink-Wink Boos”. It’s what Kevin Owens used to get before they finally turned him babyface. It’s essentially politeness from the crowd. The crowd knows they are “supposed” to boo, and they are happy to be at the show, so they half-heartedly boo. They don’t really hate Sasha. Who could? Besides Charlotte Flair and Ronda Rousey, she’s the best female performer on the show.
• Pretty heavy burial of the women’s tag titles there.
• Natalya’s music gives off a “Okay gang no more fun, mom’s here” vibe.
• Sight of Peyton Manning reminds me that somewhere Elias is frantically begging Vince to schedule an impromptu trip to Indianapolis to do an Andrew Luck routine.
• I love how Dawkins of Street Proffits asks if the match later is for the US Title, implying that nobody should give a shit if it isn’t.
• Credit where it’s due to Heyman taking over Raw. The match quality has substantially improved. The crowd chants “This is Awesome” for Ricochet vs McIntyre. I might not go that far objectively, but compared to the garbage we are used to, these matches ARE, in fact, awesome.
• Ricochet wins clean, and more importantly, “Cowboy” Bob hits 4-1 on his King of the Ring predictions.
• With the way they play up the “prestige” of this King of the Ring, my Baron Corbin prediction feels right. Let’s see if I look like a moron in a few minutes, but as he is the top heel in the company not named Shane McMahon, it is just way too easy to give him something “prestigious” to troll us on.
• End of Days, the most protected finisher in WWE, gets Corbin the win over shitty Miz to improve good ol’ “Cowboy” Bob to 5-1.
• Corbin looks delightfully heelish in that crown.
• Admit it, “King Corbin” has a great ring to it.
• The Smackdown champion is here on Raw because life has no meaning.
• I’m slightly biased here, but I think the B-Team are about to beat Viking Raiders clean.
• Viking Raiders win and the crowd is absolutely devastated.
• Both teams eliminated due to double DQ in a very shitty way to protected Viking Raiders.
• Humiliating to be the “random jobbers thrown together for no reason”, and this is the second case for Robert Roode (he had the gay millionaire and his pool boy sex slave team last year). Especially disappointing latest humiliation for Ziggler who seemed to have a little storyline going for himself last week.
• The shitty makeshift Ziggler/Roode team beats the Revival in a pretty shocking upset, and man Dawson’s undies are way too small.
• I’ll say it – fat Otis spinning around before his bodyslam looks flat-out retarded.
• Roode and Ziggler, or as I call them “The Glorious Jobbers” win in even more of a shocking upset. Good for WWE. Entertaining professional WRESTLING.
• Being that boring Nattie beat up Sasha earlier, this really should be a gigantic squash with Sasha tapping out Nattie so clean that I could eat my Chipotle extra steak bowl over her Bank Statement.
• I hate when commentators give cues that give away the finish. “HOW HUMILIATING WOULD IT BE IF SASHA GOT KNOCKED OFF IN HER FIRST MATCH BACK?!?!?” Okay, so she won’t get knocked off then? Got it.
• Similarly is a pinfall, “WE’RE GONNA HAVE A NEW CHAMPION!!!” Never gets the pin.
• I hate to be a stickler, fellow buckaroos, but Nattie spent WAY TOO LONG in that Bank Statement without tapping. And with a broken arm too? What the fuck are you protecting the 44 year old with no personality for?
• AJ Styles – all badasses censor themselves from saying naughty words. Mike Tyson did it all the time.
• Cedric Alexander receives his Protected Finish “knee injury” to allow him to lose next week to Baron Corbin without shame.
• Cedric is a fantastic wrestler and deserves a better theme song.
• Wouldn’t it be kinda cool if Strowman beat AJ for the US title, then beat Seth for Universal, then beat up Seth and made him medically unable to compete and declared himself tag champions? Oh, it wouldn’t? Fine.
• “Dolph Ziggler and Robert Roode, how did this team happen?” “Well, we both have been jobbed out embarrassingly for the past 2 years so they had nothing else for us to do.”
• If AEW thinks the little boy in his Tarzan undies and that idiot in the dinosaur mask from Party City is competing with Street Proffits they are in for a big surprise.
• One day Renee “Bart Simpson” Young needs to throw in an “Aye Carumba!”
• I love hilarious referee silent-movie-acting. “I HEARD THAT!!!” while POINTING TO HIS EARS as he disqualifies Braun.
• AJ’s extra-selling of a Braun Strowman chairshot is a thing of beauty.

Pretty decent Raw. The wrestling is so much better, and hey, the wrestling is the core of the show. It’s like an NFL team rebuilding by strengthening the offensive line and defensive lines first.