Well hello there. It’s time for another stunning edition of the Raw Redux, brought to you by yours truly. I’m not going to go away any time soon, or take a break, so you may as well sit back, get comfortable, and keep calm. That being said, read on.
The Authority kicks off with Stephanie McMahon and Triple H welcoming everyone to Monday Night Raw. Obviously they bring up the Royal Rumble and look to introduce the returning Batista. Instead, Randy Orton decides to interrupt. He is pretty pressed over the fact his old Evolution buddy is returning to the company and this leads to a confrontation between him and the McMahons over what happened with Papa Cena last week. Stephanie is laying down the law and turns it over to Triple H, who decides to assume the role of the motivator and the good cop. He decides to manipulate the voices inside Randy’s pretty little head and build him up again, and get him excited over being the face of the company. A rematch of last week, Randy Orton versus Kofi Kingston, is made for later on tonight. Triple H also tells him that he has to right the wrongs of last week with John Cena. Randy doesn’t impressed.
His look gets even more blank as Batista’s music hits.
And when the music of one Dave Batista hits, things just break down from there. Wearing jeggings, a very small jacket, and matching sneakers, Batista makes his return to the company after a four year absence. The rest of the promo is pretty irrelevant since Stephanie leaves the ring, but really. That outfit just deserved to mentioned, especially since it was accessorized with a nice, shiny nose ring.
In other Diva news, Fandango stepped inside the ring with Fandango which meant a Summer Rae sighting. The stunning blond bombshell was werking her little yellow and hot pink outfit tonight.
Short, squash match but afterwards as our beautiful ballroom couple celebrated their victory, the cameras cut to the crowd.
EMMA IS THERE AGAIN! And I love the sparkly top she’s rocking. Girl is so gorgeous.
Backstage (which I don’t have video of – sorry!) Stephanie decides that it’s time to show off her authority and has a come to Jesus talk with Kane. Stephanie tells him that since he’s in a management position now, he has to step up and act like he’s a professional. She tells him that he needs to lead by example. No truer words have ever been spoken, to be honest. Outside of Diva Dirt, I work for a very high profile company in a managerial role, and if we don’t practice what we preach, we get crucified for it.
I’m just saying!
After a very lengthy wait, we finally get Divas ring action. AJ Lee and Tamina Snuka are in action. The cameras cut to a segment from the WWE App which involves Wade Barrett and the waste of a perfectly good cake that I would have loved to eat.
But anyway… Tamina is covered in cake.
Their opponents are Naomi and Cameron.
Cameron starts off against Tamina, and it’s as big of a mismatch as it seems. The smaller woman is easily dominated by Tamina and AJ also gets in on the action. Cameron sells everything pretty well and Naomi does a great job on the outside of getting the crowd involved. It actually feels important when Naomi makes the hot tag, and Tamina gets the tag to AJ. The longest-reigning Divas Champion ever begins to taunt Naomi once she enters the ring, and that’s thanks to a huge boot to the face from Tamina. Unfortunately, the champion’s plan ends up backfiring. Naomi gets a sneaky little roll-up on AJ and gets a big three-count.
Afterwards, Naomi and Cameron celebrate but AJ has a fit. Not only did the party to celebrate her milestone not have visitors, but she loses a match. Will Naomi be next in line for a title shot?
I hope so. I want a nice Divas match at the Royal Rumble and I definitely think those two would produce something nice to kick off the road to WrestleMania. We’ve said it a thousand times before, but this time of year isn’t very kind to the Divas but the popularity the girls have gained this year speaks for itself. People care what happens to these strong, brilliant woman who fight so hard for notoriety. It doesn’t even matter that it took a notable feud between two best friends and a reality show to make people invested. The fact remains… they are invested. I fully expect AJ to carry that championship until WrestleMania and what happens then will be a toss-up.
Nice match, strong Stephanie segments, and a pretty outfit from Summer Rae. They’re keeping up the Emma crowd shots, so her official debut is getting closer and closer. It will be fun to see what the company puts together for these women who’ve brought them a lot of attention this year.
Until Sunday (should we get a match)… Namaste bitches!
