Monday Night Raw - 1/11/2016

Live from beautiful New Orleans, Louisiana, the entire male roster is out on the stage when Vince's music hits and the chairman and one of the principle owners of the WWE strut out. Stephanie asks why the Raw crowd isn't happy. Vince says to welcome your next WWE champion and gestures at the stage where the New Day are goofing off. All these men are in the Rumble apparently despite there being more than 30 guys on the stage I think and also there are a lot of tag teams there. Vince keeps calling Dolph "Dolph Ziegler." Stephanie says it could be Kevin Owens' time. Vince says he feels a hallelujah coming on because the New Day could be the new champion! The lights go out and the Wyatts teleport to commentary. Bray says "anyone but you, Roman." Vince continues his promo even though the lights are still out. Vince says Brock is entered into the Rumble. Roman's music hits and he makes his way through the crowd. JBL calls him an "irascible hothead." I think JBL says that Roman is #1 or #2 but I don't know when they announced that. The crowd is having a hard time chanting for Roman, Stephanie makes fun of them, so they give up. The crowd pops for Stephanie saying Roman is going to beat up Vince. Vince calls Roman "pal" and Roman says he's not here to beat Vince up but to ask him what happens when he wins. Stephanie cackles. Roman is booked in a "one vs all" match tonight to prove that he's capable of winning the Rumble. I think its like the Cena and Orton vs the entire roster match except instead of two guys going over everyone, it'll be one guy. Stephanie says Roman might even have to wrestle Dean but Vince clarifies that Dean wont be in that match since he has to wrestle first. Sheamus then jumps Dean and we cut to commercial.



Dean and Sheamus are wrestling when we return from break and the crowd finally got their stuff together to chant "you look stupid" at Sheamus. The only interesting spot in this entire match is Ambrose reversing the Ten Beats of the Baorin or whatever Irish I don't care and doing it to Sheamus. Why isn't Mauro calling this show instead of Smackdown? Another ad break in this meaningless, heatless match. After 20 minutes, they spill to the outside, Sheamus throws Ambrose into the barricades until the count of eight, then Ambrose throws Sheamus around until they get counted out. Sheamus is busted way the heck open. Ambrose goes in for the kill when Kevin Owens jumps Dean and they shuffle Sheamus as far away from the cameras as they can. Owens lays Ambrose out and walks out while his music plays. Cole plugs the network. Ad break.

They recap Owens jumping Dean. Renee is trying to get an interview with Dean in the trainers room. Why Dean and not Sheamus? Dean makes Renee touch his neck to prove that he's still alive. Dean being alive is bad news for Kevin Owens.
Heyman is backstage with Vince and Stephanie. Paul is upset that Vince and Stephanie took Brock's name in vain. Heyman says Brock doesn't want to wrestle in the Rumble, he wants to wrestle for the title in the main event of Wrestlemania. The winner of the Royal Rumble and the WWE World Heavyweight Champion vs his client, Brock Lesnar. Vince doesn't like that idea, Stephanie suggests they retire to an office to discuss it more.

Stardust is out wearing Ziggy Stardust facepaint. Its good. JBL is using a not-respectful enough tone when discussing Cody's Bowie homage. "The Thin White Duke!" JBL shrieks excitedly. They used the Owen Voice for Lemmy, why not Bowie. After commercial break, Titus O'Neil is solo against Stardust and Drew Brees is in the crowd. Titus is trying to beat Cody back into Stardust. Titus wins with the Clash of the Titus. I really think JBL doesn't know Bowie is dead. Stardust hits Titus with a chop block while he's celebrating with fans. They run a promo package for NXT focusing on Finn Balor's demon. Commercial.

Cole congratulates Mr. Robot for winning a Golden Globe. Mr. Robot is really good. Chris Jericho's music hits and he makes his way to the ring for the Highlight Reel. They advertised the New Day on the Highlight Reel and I'm really dreading this. Their segment last week was real garbage and they're even playing a recap of it. Welcome to Raw is Jericho. Jericho has a new Jeritron. I hate this. I hate the WWE's fake talk show segments, I don't get them. They seem like such a holdover from the 80s. New Day finally come out after Jericho cuts a promo about winning the Rumble. The New Day come out singing a Future/Drake song. I'm strongly in favor of that. Jericho is leading the crowd in a rooty tooty booty chant while New Day tell the crowd not to chant rooty tooty booty and the crowd still won't chant rooty tooty booty. The New Day start to turn the segment around by shaming Jericho when the Usos come out to make it worse. The Usos start a "whoa" chant somehow and the crowd is chanting whoa and it sucks. The Usos are real proud of their Slammies. I think the Usos are trying to go for the "endearing annoying guys" thing the New Day is good at except they're bad at it. The New Day start calling Jimmy Uso James and he corpses bad. They make some Golden Globes jokes because "they're on the bubble of pop culture." Jericho calls them dumbasses and they freak out because its a family show. Jericho books a match, Usos vs New Day with Jericho as special guest enforcer I think? I was laughing too hard at "James" and stopped paying attention to the end of the segment. Jericho refers to the Usos as his "back of the bus brothers." Is that racist? He also calls the New Day "My Little Pony jabronis" which is really good. He says he's going to wham bam thank you ma'am the New Day and says "that's for Bowie." Commercial break.

The match is Usos vs Kofi and Big E with Xavier and Jericho on the outside. The match isn't anything special and its hard to understand Xavier over Cole, Byron, and JBL droning on. Xavier parades around the ring to blow his trombone in Jericho's face but Jericho chases him off as we cut to commercial. The Usos win and break Xavier's trombone, between the promo segment and the match, this lasted half an hour.

WWE REAL FACTS: Dolph Ziggler has a successful improv and standup comedy career outside of wwe.

Paul Heyman is begging Stephanie to book Brock vs the Rumble winner. Stephanie says if he wants to wrestle at Wrestlemania, Brock needs to enter the Rumble. Heyman says Brock says no. Stephanie says to tell Brock that Vince says that Brock is contractually obligated to enter the Rumble. Paul smiles and says he will.

Sting is going to be (posthumously thanks to Seth Rollins' unsafe offense) inducted into the hall of fame.

The Wyatts are out. Commercial break.

The Wyatts are still doing their entrance when we come back from break. The #socialoutcasts come out to dead silence. They cut a promo on the Wyatts because they're unbreakable like a chain, like the four musketeers. A four vs four match starts. Strowman kills the Outcasts until Ryback's music hits and he takes out the Wyatts with the help of the #socialoutcasts. Ryback's music plays again. A recap of the Cena/Del Rio/Kalisto stuff from Smackdown plays. Too bad John is literally dead and Kalisto is short. Back on Raw, Renee interviews Kalisto. He and Renee are almost the same height. Kalisto cuts a latino hero promo like face Del Rio did. He talks about latino heroes like John Cena and Eddie Guerrero. Commercial break.

Del Rio is out to defend his United States Championship. He cuts a promo bragging about how he put Cena out of action. Cena won't be in the Rumble or at Wrestlemania because he broke him. Kalisto hits the ring. They wrestle. Commercial break. They come back and Kalisto is already in the middle of his babyface comeback that Del Rio immediately cuts off. Kalisto picks up the win off a headscissors roll up and wins the United States Championship. Good to see they're booking Kalisto's midcard title run the same way they booked Mysterio's run at the top so far.

Brie Bella has the second best music in the Divas division. She's out with Alicia Fox to wrestle Charlotte with her dad. Becky jumps Charlotte before the bell. Refs drag Becky away while she screams that she's going to take Charlotte's championship. Ric gets on the mic and says that Charlotte is hurt and won't wrestle and its all because of Becky Lynch. He demands his sport coat and calls a fan "fatboy." He's going to get in so much trouble for taking the smile off that fat fan's face.

Paul is backstage WITH BROCK. Commercial break.

We return to Raw with a recap of the Charlotte/Becky thing. JoJo interviews Becky backstage. She says she's going to make Charlotte tap out in a pretty firey babyface promo. They play a recap of Heyman and Stephanie. Roman comes down through the crowd at 10:37. I hope Brock and Heyman have something big planned because Roman going over the whole roster is going to get boring after half an hour.

When we come back from commercial, Roman is in the ring and Vince and Stephanie are on the stage. All the heels come out and we get to see how shallow the bad guy roster is. Its a gauntlet style match but I don't think the wrestlers realized that because they all got in the ring and Vince had to tell them to get out.  Kevin Owens starts out first against Roman, proving they have no interest in protecting him. Kevin vs Roman is going for a real while. If we don't get Brock tonight, I'm done with the WWE and deleting this blog. He was in that bumper, he's Chekov's Wrestler. Roman goes to spear Owens when the Ascension hop on the apron but eat a superman punch, Stardust gets in the ring and eats a samoan drop. Tyler Breeze tries to get involved but Roman does his bad one arm powerbomb thing followed by a spear while Owens sneaks away. Roman taunts Vince and Vince sics the rest of the heels on him. The New Day set Roman up and Alberto and Sheamus kick his head off while the crowd chants "we want Brock." Brock's music finally hits and here comes the pain beast. The New Day set Roman up for Brock but Brock murders them and Owens and Alberto. Sheamus manages to actually get offense in but also gets murdered. Brock finally clears the ring and then F-5s Roman. Brock is the best, he's so scary. See you next week!