Last week, the RAW women’s division made it very clear that there is a massive target on the Champion’s back. From broken deals, to childish insults, to surprise returns – the women made is clear that Alexa Bliss’ days are numbered. How will things continue this week? Only one way to find out with the RAW Redux!
Quite a long way into the broadcast, we get our first glimpse of a woman this week. The Intercontinental Champion, The Miz is in the ring to host a special MizTV to apologize to his wife, Maryse. Over the last few weeks, he has upset his wife firstly by destroying a Grandfather clock that she got him as a gift and also for accidentally knocking her off the apron during his match last week.
He’s in the ring with 2 guys dressed up in bear suits holding signs with apologies. The Miz introduces his ‘gorgeous, sexy wife Maryse’ who makes her way down to the ring with her classic ‘Pourqoui’ theme that brought me all the way back to 2008!
She doesn’t seem too impressed, but he hands her a flute of champagne. The Miz goes into full soppy husband mode to apologize to his pride, but wants Maryse to open his gift in the middle of the ring. Maryse opens it up and finds a Grandfather clock that she intended to give him a couple weeks ago! He grovels some more, saying that it’s Dean Ambrose who is coming in between them both because he doesn’t have what they have.
By the time Maryse and The Miz have made up and attempt to seal it with a kiss, Dean Ambrose makes his way to the ring! The dudes look ready to scrap, but The Miz pushes Maryse in front of him, which causes her to spill her drink all over herself! He apologizes even more, then turns his attentions to Ambrose and charges at him. Ambrose ducks out the way to The Miz runs right into Maryse’s clock and ruins it one more time.
Maryse is shocked and even strikes away The Miz’s hand when he tries to comfort her. She exits the ring humiliated as Ambrose clears The Miz from the ring. However, the two bears in the ring start assaulting Ambrose! They reveal themselves as Curtis Axel and Bo Dallas! The heels lay down the beating on Ambrose, but there is far from unity between the WWE’s ‘It’ couple…
Later on in the night, we see some women’s division action with Sasha Banks making her way down to the ring. She’s set to on the ‘kinda’ number 1 contender-ish Nia Jax!
The followed out by our RAW Women’s Champion, Alexa Bliss, who joins the commentary team. Annoyingly, the commercial break starts and the match is already underway by the time we come back. Nia seems to have edge over Sasha as we come back from the break, who seems to be making light work of the former 3-time RAW Women’s Champion.
Sasha is able to create some breathing space by countering a charge from Nia in the corner, she climbs up to the top rope and launches onto Nia with her classic double knees! Meanwhile, Emma pops up at the commentary table and confronts Alexa for her actions last week, where she refused to take Emma’s tag into the match. Alexa shoves Emma, who starts to chase her into the ring!
Alexa scurries behind Nia, her ally, who seems slightly angered that her match is being interrupted once again. Emma signals that she wants Alexa… and Nia snatches Alexa to feed to Emma. Alexa manages to duck out the way, causing Emma to kick Nia right in the stomach! The referee calls for the bell as Sasha Banks is disqualified!
It’s far from over though! An angry Nia shoves down Emma, but then gets jumped by Sasha! Alexa helps to knock Sasha off and she soon comes face to face again with Emma. In a slight twist, the two start stomping all over Sasha! That’s until back-up arrives in the form of Mickie James and Dana Brooke! They attempt to even the odds, but Nia Jax wrecks through them all.
She misses a leg drop, but the sound of Bayley’s theme hits the sound system as she comes charging down to the ring! Straight away she goes for Alexa and Emma, clearing them from the ring, but she’s stopped in her tracks by Nia. While Nia attempts to cause some damage, Dana and Mickie try to come in for the save. A kick from Bayley, another kick from Sasha, a faceplant from the turnbuckle from Bayley and a double dropkick by Mickie and Dana are finally able to make Nia exit the ring. The faces stand tall, but there is still clearly tension among the women in the division!
Thoughts: Oh RAW… I honestly felt like I was back in 2009. No segments, no interviews and a big brawl with every woman that they could find. It’s moments like this where I realise how far the women have come over the years and we should never take that for granted. For years, this 6 minutes of screen time was all we ever got from the women and it’s why the division was seen as a joke. It’s even more ironic, since this is mentioned in this week’s Table for 3 segment with former Divas Champions Kelly Kelly, Eve Torres and Maryse who voiced their opinion about the unfairness of this all.
So following an amazing Money In The Bank showing by all of the women on SmackDown, I just felt so disappointed by the booking of the women on RAW this week. A division with so much potential and no one has any direction at all. Mickie and Dana have no characters, it made no sense for Alexa and Emma to team up after their altercation caused the entire brawl and Nia is still just ‘there’. Now they’ve thrown Bayley back into the mix, which is cool and she got a good reaction, but still where are they going?
I was so happy following the Superstar Shake-Up this year and the potential within the division, but the RAW writing team have shown that they clearly don’t know how to book multiple women. This was pretty much a sign when last year, all we ever got was Sasha Banks VS Charlotte… but the roster was half the size. Now we have more active competitors, it’s just exposed how they have no idea what they’re doing. I don’t know whether most of the senior writers are on the RAW team, but what we got last week, as I already mentioned, was a step back to the darker eras of the women’s division. Conversely, the SmackDown women’s division is killing it right now and it looks like things will continue going that way… but the red team has loads of work to even hold a candle to that division right now. Let’s not even mention the rumours that Maryse may be leaving The Miz, that would be another blow to the women’s roster on RAW.
How did you feel about this week’s reduced screen time for the women? What is the RAW women’s division lacking? What feud do you think we need next? You know what to do in the comments!
