With the road to Wrestlemania officially in high-gear, we continue our build to FastLane with the return of the Beast himself Brock Lesnar. After last week’s announcement that Lesnar would be taking on Dean Ambrose and Roman Reigns for a shot at Triple H’s title, the former Champ came back to Raw looking to make a statement. Let’s take a look at what went down.
Ambrose Talks His Way Into Suplex City
We kick things off the right way, with Brock Lesnar and Paul Heyman gracing our television screens. A very loud ‘Suplex City’ chant hits immediately and Heyman introduces us to himself and his client Brock Lesnar. I missed that Walrus and his intros.
Heyman cuts to the chase. He says the Beast has business to attend to and the first order is to let Bray Wyatt know that he and the Wyatt Family failed in their attempt to get Lesnar out of the title picture. He says that once Wyatt deals with his current situation, he’ll be more than happy to destroy the Wyatt Familly.
But on to the issue in front of them. Heyman promises that Lesnar will toss both Dean Ambrose and Roman Reigns into Suplex City. Then he will F5 everyone. Then he will stack them on top of each other and pin them. Then he will go on to Wrestlemania and beat Triple H (again) and become the WWE Champion.
Heyman then says that Reigns knows what it’s like to get in the ring with Brock Lesnar, so he needs to explain that to his short-bus riding maniac of a brother Ambrose.
This of course brings out Ambrose who, among other things, calls Heyman ‘Porky’ and then says he is WWE’s iron man who is not crazy or stupid, just someone ready to fight everyone for the WWE title.
Ambrose knows he’s going to take a beating but meh, he doesn’t really care. He actually asks to go to Suplex City and then requests the worst beating ever before leaving.
I love that crazy bastard.
We see Reigns and Ambrose backstage looking at Triple H’s belt before Stephanie McMahon walks up and immediately starts trying to plant seeds of a break-up between the two. She talks about Lesnar beating them and then goes over some of the more famous friendships that have been ruined over the years before dropping the philosophical hammer on em by saying ‘Absolute power corrupts absolutely’ and yes that was sarcasm people.
Oh and tonight it’s Ambreigns vs. the New Day.
We see Lesnar and Heyman before Triple H shows up and Lesnar tells him that he’ll see him at Wrestlemania (no he won’t).
Main event time and we start things off correct, with a New Day promo. The trio comes out and talks about their beef with the Rock from last week and then something about still wanting to fight kids.
The match itself was actually pretty great and it saw Ambreigns play the faces in peril before some hot tags swung things. It also featured this weird spanking sequence courtesy of Big E and the ‘New Day Rocks’ chant.
As expected, Ambreigns picks up the win because faces but the fun really starts when the match ends.
Out comes Lesnar to destroy everything and as he makes his way towards his FastLane opponents, the New Day tries to attack from behind so they get destroyed. Eventually Reigns and Kofi end up brawling to the outside so Lesnar takes advantage and destroys Ambrose with an F5.
The Beast stands tall as we go off the air.
Other Results –
The Show-Off Gets a Big Win – Our match of the night featured Dolph Ziggler taking on Kevin Owens in a pretty damn good back and forth match. The Heartbreak Kid would have been proud of the superkicks in this one, and Owens in particular showed off his arsenal of moves.
Ziggler picks up the surprise win with a Zig Zag out of nowhere. Owens responds by throwing things at Michael Cole.
Interesting development or the beginning of Owens heading to Creative purgatory?
The Boss & Becky… Team Up? – We get a match between Sasha Banks and Becky Lynch that started with a great Boss promo about how nothing is oging to stop her. Naomi and Tamina come out and they say they support her yay kumbaya!
The match itself was pretty good but eventually Team BAD gets involved and tries to attack Lynch. Sasha goes outside to stop Tamina and Naomi, who get mad and attack Sasha instead. Becky makes the save and apparently her and Sasha are now buddies.
Just in case you were keeping track, that was the exact moment Banks rise as a face started. Not sure how I feel about this.
Please Don’t Let AJ Styles Feud With the Miz – We get MizTV because why go away from something terrible right? This weeks guest is AJ Styles and Miz basically ridicules him and tells Styles he needs to come under his wing. This storyline was so good when Miz did it with Neville that WWE dropped it like it never happened so sure, try it with a guy who debuted two weeks ago and is super over right? Eventually AJ snaps and attacks Miz, which is something we all want to do.
For AJ’s sake I hope this is a one-off and not his storyline moving forward. WHY DID WE GO AWAY FROM THE OWENS-STYLES TEASE WE SAW AT THE ROYAL RUMBLE?!
Strong Throwman, Your Destiny Awaits – Big Show and Erick Rowan was a thing that happened. After, the Wyatt bigs (minus Bray) destroyed the Giant following a Big Show-Strong Throwman staredown.
It’s pretty clear Throwman is going to feud with Big Show before transitioning into a feud with either Kane (shudder) or the Undertaker (uncontrollable shudder) at ‘Mania. One day soon we’re probably going to look back at this and laugh about that time WWE tried to make Throwman a monster heel and it didn’t work out.
Kalisto Survives Rusev – An interesting new wrinkle in the League of Nations, they’ve apparently moved on from the WWE title picture and directly into the U.S. Title scene. After we find out that Del Rio will have a rematch with Kalisto at FastLane, Kalisto picks up the win over Rusev via countout. The match was a good one that luckily didn’t have any LoN interference and included Kalisto almost dying at one point.
Del Rio tries to attack after but the scrappy underdog escapes.
Brie Bella, Welcome to the Divas Title Picture – So for some reason Charlotte talks trash to Brie about Nikki’s neck injury, and then Brie beats her with a roll-up in a singles match. Instead of the Charlotte-Sasha-Becky triple threat, WWE feels the need to insert a fourth Diva so welcome to the club Mrs. Daniel Bryan!
Goldust Continues His R-Truth Recruitment – R-Truth walks into a bathroom. Goldust is in a stall. He asks Truth to be his partner before making a Little Jimmy reference that angers Truth who storms off. Goldust then slips on the toilet seat and his foot goes into the bowl.
Yeah.
The ‘Creative Has Nothing For You’ Match of the Night – The Usos took on the Social Outcasts because reasons and the only interesting thing here was Lillian Garcia announcing the Usos as Grammy winners instead of Slammy winners. Oh and Curtis Axel getting his head kicked off.
That ref reaction was probably the highlight of the match. Usos get the win.
The ‘Creative REALLY Has Nothing For You’ Match of the Night – Tyler Breeze lost to Titus O’Neil in a match that just reminds us how sad it is that Creative can’t find something meaningful for these two talents.
