I must say that last night’s episode of Raw was interesting. It was the perfect mix of sheer brilliance and floppage, all wrapped in one. I guess you could say it full of good moments, bad moments, and ugly moments. I think you guys know where I’m going with this. I don’t know if I have ever ran down Raw with an edition of the good, the bad, and the ugly and if I haven’t, then consider this the innagural edition! If I have, well then just disregard that sentence, and enjoy what I’m about to write. Almost all of our favorite Divas made their presence felt in some way last night. Brie Bella, Nikki Bella, AJ Lee, Kaitlyn, Natalya, Naomi, Cameron and Eva Marie got their screen time and the best part of that is everything was used as a stepping stone to the biggest party of the summer, SummerSlam! And speaking of summer, our favorite ballroom Diva, Summer Rae, wasn’t left out of the fun either. In fact, she was the good part of Raw if you want my humble option.
I know a lot of us have given Summer the nickname of “Summer Slay” and last night it was so, so fitting. Call me superficial. Call me frivolous. But don’t you dare try and disagree with me on this. That was by far Summer’s best outfit. I mean, oh my God. That girl and that baby pink, with the tan skin and blond hair, wow. She’s so gorgeous and pictures just don’t do her justice. She completely killed it last night.
The dance off itself was ridiculous, to be honest. I don’t care about R-Truth and Summer and Fandango should be competing for one of the mid-card titles. I can only hope sunnier days are ahead for them as summer fades to autumn. I feel like their are, and Summer continues to show a great character in a very limited roll. It took me a long time to warm up to her as Fandango’s dancer, and now that I’m into it, I don’t want them to split up any time soon. They have so much more they can do, and I hope the ‘E pulls the trigger on it.
That was good, and now for the bad. The backstage segment featuring the Bellas, Funkadactyls, Natalya, and Eva Marie was bad… ASS! The acting wasn’t as piss poor as last week, it was a lot better but to be honest, they could have said their lines in Randy Orton monotone fashion and I wouldn’t have cared.
The fact that they just set up another match for SummerSlam is everything. When was the last time we got two Diva matches on a pay-per-view telecast?! Love, love, LOVE the fact that this is going to be a singles match between Natalya and Brie. I love, love, LOVE that they are bringing their own back up to this fight. I’ve always said the Brie is the better wrestler of the twins, and working with Natalya is only going to highlight that and help Brie get better. I know there’s going to be drama at ringside with all these personalities around and you know it’s going to get physical. I don’t know how much they’ll be able to do with Nikki being a bit injured, but this has so much promise. The best part about all of this if not for Total Divas, you know the show that was supposedly ruin the division, we wouldn’t even be getting this match. It wouldn’t shock me if this ended up being a contendership match for the Diva’s Championship, especially since Natalya made the champ tap out last night.
Twice.
I think you can use the process of elimination to determine that this was the ugly part of the night. I’m not sure what the referee was doing, I’m going to assume he got distracted by a magical butterfly that flew into the ring and he was watching it flutter on by when AJ was tapping out. That’s obviously the only logical reason he could have missed the most important part of the match, correct?
The fact Natalya went to have her hand raised was cringe-worthy. Bless their hearts. The joys of live televison, eh? They had to redo the finish, and AJ had to tap… again. And what was already a confusing and random match, became just that much worse. Big E. Langston and AJ both look terrible going into SummerSlam, and I can only assume that they went against The Great Khali and Natalya as practice? Who in the world knows. The booking was weird, the ending was awful, and unless something happens on SmackDown to give AJ and Big E. some momentum, Kaitlyn and Dolph Ziggler look like the favorites going in.
Prince Dawlf and his ex-NXT love were watching all of this backstage.
I feel so bad putting down a much needed Natalya win because we all know how hard she fights for her screen time and for respect, but it just came at such an odd time. The terrible mess at the end didn’t help matters either, and really, that is probably what made this match so ugly. Looking past it, I liked Nattie and AJ’s chemistry. It was very interesting to watch AJ keep Nattie grounded, and control most of the match. The couple of near falls that they had led to AJ freaking out a bit at Hornswoggle, and that’s always fun to see. If we do end up getting a feud between these two for the title, I’ll cry rainbow tears of happiness because it is a dream match. And Nattie more than deserves that opportunity. I seriously love the idea of her being the next challenger, and it would be fitting with what’s going on with Total Divas. It all kind of ties into together.
Not having to watch Khali lumber around the ring with Big E. was nice as well, and AJ slapping him was hilarious. I do like that they didn’t just forget Nattie and Khali were friends thanks Total Divas either. I may not like them together, but I’m glad it wasn’t dropped or just forgotten.
Raw was definitely a hodgepodge tonight of conflicting scenarios, but somehow it all worked. I think AJ and Big E. will have something huge on SmackDown to make them look good for Sunday, so I’m not going to stress this anymore than I already. We’ll likely get something from Kaitlyn and Prince Dawlf as well, so I’ll just keep my fingers crossed and roll with the punches. Either way, I’m excited for Sunday and more excited for all of you who are going to get a SummerSlam and Total Divas Redux from me, haha. Double the Cryssi… double the fun! You know you love it just like I love the Divas, whether their stuff is a hot mess or not. Together, we all keep the belief alive and believe it or not, I appreciate every single one of you who read these and leave comments, good and bad.
Until Sunday… Cryssi out!
