One week to go ‘til Survivor Series and the last time for the RAW team to wave that red flag ahead of the brand showdown. Will our team members be able to iron out their differences in time for the match? Let’s find out!
The top of the show sees the RAW women’s team consisting of RAW Women’s Champion, Charlotte (accompanied by Dana Brooke), Alicia Fox, Nia Jax, Sasha Banks and Bayley on the stage with the rest of this weekend’s RAW competitors. RAW Commissioner Stephanie McMahon and Mick Foley address the women, saying that they have to prove that RAW is the place to find the top women’s competition in the WWE.
They book tonight’s match… where rivals Charlotte and Sasha Banks will have to team up to take on two other women who haven’t seen eye to eye, Alicia Fox with Nia Jax.
Before the match, we catch bitter enemies Sasha Banks and Charlotte backstage. Charlotte says that Sasha is immature since she can’t get along with the other teammates, which causes Sasha to reply that she’s “crazier than Miley Cyrus” (hey WWE writers, Miley was a thing in like 2014…) and she mentions that she’s not the only person with a problem with the self-proclaimed ‘Queen’ Charlotte. The Champ says that Sasha is just “radiating jealousy” since she defeated Charlotte at Hell In A Cell, but Sasha cuts her off by reminding her that she still has a rematch (the Banks/Flair chronicles continue… blehh), but now their priority should be leading the RAW team to victory. Sasha reminds her longtime rival that if RAW loses, all of that failure is on the Captain’s shoulders!
Onto the tag match, Dana Brooke accompanies Charlotte to the ring, while we see Bayley has joined the commentary desk and is talking about how excited she is to be at her first Survivor Series. Sasha, Alicia and Nia make their way down and it’s pretty much obvious that everyone hates each other; screwfaces, eyerolling and death stares being sent all round by all these future team members.
Nia tags herself in at the beginning of the match, causing Charlotte to rethink her plan and go to tag Sasha… who jumps off the apron! After quite an even face off, Nia soon gets the better of Charlotte who manages to tag in Sasha. Despite a burst of offence, Nia is quick to throw around the Boss who is pretty much half her size. Finally we can see Nia mix with the other girls… until we cut to a break.
When we come back from the break, Alicia Fox is back in the ring and seems to be taking most of the offence from Sasha and Charlotte. When Charlotte tags herself in, we get the inevitable break down between these two rivals, as they start exchanging blows. That’s until Nia gets the hot tag, taking Charlotte out with a clothesline and attempting a Samoan Drop on Sasha.
Luckily, Sasha wriggles out of Nia’s clutches and provides a chance for Charlotte to hit a Big Boot on the big opponent. She doesn’t fall to the floor, instead falling to the corner where Foxy gets a tag. She climbs up to the top to take a squabbling Banks and Flair out with a diving crossbody, only for Sasha to reverse her pinfall attempt into the Banks Statement for the tap out victory!
During the celebrations, Sasha and Charlotte refuse to have their hands raised together… that’s until Bayley comes to the ring and raises both their hands up! She attempts to hug Charlotte who walks away, while Nia looks on fuming. Can the RAW team get on the same page in time?
Charlotte is caught backstage for a quick post-match interview, reiterating the fact that she’s the Captain of the team, a Winner and a three time Women’s Champion… so Sasha will need to listen to her if they’re going to win.
Oh yeah, there was another Emma promo… but I’m over it. They haven’t even got to ‘week countdown’ yet, so when she’ll return, I don’t really care now.
Thoughts: I could have called this match a mile away, it’s nice actually because it’s what they’ve usually done with the Main Eventers – making big foes team up and shaking the dynamic. For me, that was a nice touch, it was so refreshing to see Charlotte and Sasha not wrestling each other again, but it was pretty obvious that Alicia was going to take the fall. Poor Alicia, no one even bothered to help her up and this is supposed to be a team! At this point, I’m pretty sure everyone know Alicia will probably be the first pinfall in Sunday’s match, but hey at least it’s nice to see her in the ring more often.
Nia Jax is still missing something with me. She’s still clearly green and seeing her look stronger than Charlotte felt a bit weird… I feel that there’s definitely something there in the future when she works a programme with girls like Sasha and Charlotte, but I think there’s some way to go. She’s an enigma in this division, NXT has shown she can go… but we just don’t know how hard and for how long for. Either way Survivor Series will be a nice opportunity for her to finally make a statement and hopefully this can be a good moment for her.
Finally, I have to comment on Bayley – for me they used to correctly this week. Her commentary and talking about being excited is what she needs, then having her come in and be the super babyface and raising their hands is all what this ‘Bayley’ character is about. There’s a fine line between a joke babyface and a popular face that isn’t just about winning, simple things like this will help her character a lot more than if she was still in squash matches. Part of me sees Survivor Series being a big night for The Huggable One too, the stage is being set for a big showcase for our RAW girls and showing if there really are stars outside of The Boss and The Queen.
Are you Team RAW? Do you think a RAW Superstar will be left as the sole survivor? Do you still care about ‘the premiere of Emmalina’? You know what to do!
