RAW 14/06/23: Dean Ambrose is the best at over-aggressive brawling -OR- Abe Lincoln lives

Vickie Guerrero gets a long goodbye +++ Rusev and Lana doing some Washington D.C. sightseeing +++ Cameron summarizes the WWE in one sentence +++ Triple H and his puppy think they have got the last laugh +++ 100 ways to throw your mic away. By Dean Ambrose +++ Dolph Ziggler gets a title match +++ The female Shield makes their first appearance +++ Cesaro doesn’t speak Loser +++ I’ve got a déjà vu about the main event match +++ I need 30min Dean Ambrose promos in my life

“Anyway, you didn’t have a choice. I would have shown up in Boston anyway. How do I make that clear? I would have just go ahead walking up that ladder after pummeling Seth Rollins half to death, grab that briefcase, take it to downtown Boston, sell it at a pawnshop, if they didn’t go ahead to just put me in that match. So, that’s what’s best for business. Smart decision by Triple H. You know what’s the bad decision by Triple H? Getting on my bad side and making an enemy for life of Dean Ambrose. I’ve never liked Triple H. You know, I have had respect for him as a competitor. But I never liked him. He was in Evolution; I was in The Shield, you know. But now, he’s got an enemy for life. Seth Rollins has an enemy for life. And that’s bad. Your life changes when I am your enemy. And it’s just gonna keep getting worse for them. I’M GOING TO MONEY IN THE BANK, TOM! How’s Triple H gonna to explain this? How’s Triple H gonna to explain to the WWE Universe? There’s investors! How’s Triple H gonna to explain to his wife, that scumbag Dean Ambrose is holding a contract for the World Heavyweight Championship shot? God, that really looks bad for the company, doesn’t it? I’m sure he’ll figure it out cause he’s our boss. And he knows what’s best for business.” –DEAN AMBROSE.

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Vickie Guerrero gets a long goodbye
This episode of RAW from Washington, D.C. was the 1,100th, so this was very much hyped. And it started almost as usual: Stephanie McMahon made her way inside the ring. And we already knew that it was all about Vickie Guerrero and her “behaviour” on the latest episode of SmackDown. Consequently, Vickie was called out and already her entrance was quite heart-breaking. I never was a huge fan of Vickie, mostly because of her very annoying voice. I also didn’t really knew what her job was all about. But watching her making her way through the ladders, that promoted Money In The Bank, was sad: without music she walked slowly inside the ring to join Stephanie, only awaiting her doom. Stephanie, of course, wanted to instantly fire Vickie but had another thought on it. Maybe it would be some fun to let Vickie beg for her job? Nope, it wasn’t that funny. But then she came up with another great idea: Vickie should fight for her job against Stephanie, and Stephanie was at her best cocky confidence about it. But finally, when Vickie noticed that she’d already lost, she told Stephanie that if anything she learned from her late husband Eddie Guerrero, then how to “lie, cheat and steal”. Nice teaser for the upcoming showdown between these two.

Rusev and Lana doing some Washington D.C. sightseeing
We then got a MITB promotion segment with two singles matches between Jimmy Uso and Luke Harper (Harper won within not even two minutes) and Jay Uso vs Erick Rowan, which Jay won. On Sunday, it will be a tag team match between these two factions, so given the outcome of this little teaser, it’s 50 / 50 who’ll be the tag team champions after the show. Anyway, after Rowan lost, a little brawl between these four men started and ended up with Harper & Rowan standing tall inside the ring, presenting the titles. Recently, we haven’t witnessed any title changes at a PPV — Sunday could be different.

Then, Bray Wyatt had a little promo about himself backstage. And that was followed by a little clip from Rusev and Lana mocking the sightseeing opportunities in Washington, D.C. Kremlin obviously is far more outstanding than the White House. And, of course, the fresh facelifted Vladimir Putin was shown again as a big picture on all our TV screens. The mocking of the USA went on, and it was good that WWE did it differently this time with this little outside clip but there needed something else to be done to keep this interesting. Otherwise this mocking just grows old and doesn’t have any impact anymore. But it happened something later on.

Cameron summarizes the WWE in one sentence
For the next match between Alicia Fox and Naomi, we got Paige and Cameron on commentary. Cameron was all about mocking Paige, promoting herself and basically belittling her Funkadaktyls partner Naomi. And she really told us in one sentence what this business is all about:

People talking about me, and that’s all that matters.

And that’s why Super Cena is still booked like hell. It doesn’t matter that he is a face and in some arenas gets some huge negative pop. It was slightly different to the situation with Batista, because he was turned heel when negativity overwhelmed. But Cena is the face of the company (doesn’t matter what Randy Orton says), so with all tricks and storyline turns Cena is somehow brought back to some kind of positive popularity. Was he ever considered a heel?

Anyway, talk here isn’t about Cena but given that I’m talking about him when I really wanted to write something about the Divas match should give you an idea what I am talking about right now. Besides mocking each other, Paige and Cameron somehow took notice of the match itself. I think it was about who’ll win gets the title match against Paige on Sunday. Naomi won the match, so she got the chance to grab that title off Paige. I doubt that this will happen.

Triple H and his puppy think they have got the last laugh
We continued with the promos by all seven competitors of the WHC ladder match at MITB with a backstage babbling by Sheamus and Super Reigns. Particularly in this promo, I didn’t understand Reigns at all. He always swallows words and basically talks only to himself. Someone should tell him that it doesn’t matter that he himself understands him; the people on the telly and in the arena need to understand him, too (even that it’s mostly irrelevant what he’s telling us). It might have been something about being on his own, he doesn’t trust anyone but himself and will win the title on Sunday.

A little match between Titus O’Neil and Bo Dallas with Bo extending his winning streak to Nine-to-Bo (sic!) later, we got Triple H inside the ring for him announcing all competitors of the contract ladder match at MITB. With very much cockiness and exaggerated hype, he first told us what we already knew: Seth Rollins was the first entrant, followed by Kofi Kingston and Dolph Ziggler (who basically self-promoted themselves on SmackDown last week). Wade Barrett also was quite certainly in this match [!!!SPOILER!!!: although after SmackDown this week there is some doubt around his actual appearance, since he’d injured his shoulder in his match against Dean Ambrose], only with Jack Swagger and RVD I was wrong — totally forgot the old horses. And that was all for the moment: only six competitors in the contract ladder match, but since there were already pictures with seven competitors, Seth Rollins pictured and the other six ones still as shadows, we knew that there would be another one added later on. And we already knew who that would be as well.

But first, the new pet of Triple H, Seth Rollins, made his way inside the ring (Sidenote: he was wearing a new t-shirt of The Authority!) to basically repeat himself in stating that he created The Shield, so has got the right to destroy them. Yeah, like you might have made that up in your mind and it sounds logical and right there. But right in the middle of promoting himself as the winner of the contract, RVD came out to laugh at Seth and mocks Triple H about his new toy boy. He basically asked him then for permission to get a match against Rollins. So, that was made up as a teaser for the match on Sunday.

100 ways to throw your mic away. By Dean Ambrose
The match between Seth Rollins and RVD lasted for almost ten minutes, Seth could finally hit his Curb Stomp, when Dean Ambrose made his way inside the ring to a huge pop. And just before Seth could get the win, Dean caused disqualification for actually RVD winning this match. I have long noticed that it takes quite a while for most WWE fans to grow on Dean Ambrose. But when he finally gets one, he consumes everything and that will last like forever, I guess. He’ll take over WWE, like he took over every other company he was associated with in the past. Believe that!

The great thing about a brawling Dean Ambrose is that at some point I always say to myself: damn, this shit looks real! This heat isn’t fake at all. I certainly know that it isn’t. But I also ask myself what actually happens when Dean Ambrose is indeed pissed off for real. First, he stomped Seth outside the ring, threw him over the barricades and went on to brawl with him on the ground when finally three referees got him off his former business partner.

He then pretended that he had calmed down and would finally leave Seth Rollins alone. But just when the referees lost interest, Dean turned, made his way back over the announcers table and onto Seth again. Somehow, the three referees were second time sucessful and Seth was able to flee further punishment. Dean made his way inside the ring to give Seth the look, he had already mocked earlier on. But he still had something to say about his behaviour because this was just some little teaser for what would happen at MITB if he was indeed left out of the contract ladder match. He would appear anyway and screw up the whole PPV. I have to admit that I really wanted to see that but it was quite obvious that Dean would have success with his strategy.

You can watch all of this, together with him showing us two other possibilities to get rid of some microphone, in the video above. I’d really liked to link to the official WWE channel on YouTube but for the relevant video they have cut out Dean’s promo inside the ring, so this one is only useful for the actual brawl.

After this we got a backstage promo with Triple H and Seth Rollins. The latter was quite furious and demanded from Triple H that he should put Dean Ambrose in that contract ladder match. Seth told Triple H that he was able to control Dean Ambrose for two years (LOL), so he should be able to do exactly this on Sunday. He admitted that he wouldn’t be able to do that when he had to fear for him appearing out of nothing like all the time when he wasn’t in the match. So, that might sound like a good idea, given that Triple H granted his wish, of course. But you just don’t know what you are wish / hope for, Seth!

Dolph Ziggler gets a title match
Next up was a real match, so to speak, because Dolph Ziggler got an opportunity to become the new Intercontinental Champion. At least, he got a decent match against Wade Barrett. At the end of the almost eleven minute long match, several finishers were countered but finally, Wade Barrett got the win with the Bull Hammer. Unfortunately I don’t have much more to say about that. I still don’t like spaghetti hair Ziggler, also Wade Barrett’s presence didn’t make me all excited for this title match. Maybe because I already knew that WWE wouldn’t hand over Ziggler the title.

The female Shield makes their first appearance
After just another hype promo for Super Reigns backstage with Vickie Guerrero and Randy Orton, we went back inside the arena to get to hear the music of Eddie Guerrero. It was quite obvious that this would be Vickie’s last appearance in WWE, so the whole segment was fun with the last laugh for Vickie. Nice touch after all.

I’m just not sure about this new female Shield team, or what else Layla, Rosa Mendez and Alicia Fox were appearing as. Steph send them inside the ring to get Vickie back to her at ramp-side. There was a pool placed with some substance innit that looked like choc pudding while the announcers sold it like it was some real disgusting smelling stuff. I very much believe in my pudding theory. Anyway, this pool was the target: whoever ended up there first, would loose the “match” and if it was Vickie, she would loose her job. The female Shield was then all about to catch Vickie to throw her inside the pool. So, Stephanie wouldn’t need to make herself dirty. It turned out, that Vickie was very much able to deal with all three female Shield members, threw all three of them one after the other inside the pool. But at the end, she was slightly too excited about herself, didn’t pay attention to her actual opponent. So, she ended up in the pool as well to get fired. But she still got satisfaction and a fitting farewell with throwing Stephanie inside the pool. It took ages until Stephanie did make her way back outside.

Cesaro doesn’t speak Loser
After this, we had to calm down from laughing again. So, we got some tiny backstage promo with Goldust talking about his “new” partner Stardust, stating that we was the normal one out of the two of them, after Stardust was shown singing. A mid-card match between Jack Swagger and Kofi Kingston ended up with Swagger winning to further tease the contract ladder match at MITB.

Alberto Del Rio was then seen again backstage who actually promoted himself to be the winner at the WHC ladder match. And that was quite refreshing, given the fact that almost every other competitor in for this match was talking about Super Reigns. Cesaro then joined the excitement together with Paul Heyman. They mocked each other with Cesaro finally informing Del Rio that he would speak five languages but none of them would be Loser. Unfortunately he didn’t say that in Spanish.

Next was Damien Sandow with his again town fitting gimmick: Abraham Lincoln. The best part of his promo here certainly was this:

Five years ago, all of you were complaining that I’m not entertaining. Look at me now.

He was indeed right: he’s entertaining as hell now. But he isn’t satisfied like he wanted to elaborate after that. But Big E interrupted him, got his match against the 16th president of the United States and won within just under one minute. Maybe, Big E made it such a short match because he felt the need to speak out against Rusev. He already lost against him but couldn’t stand his constant mocking against the good old United States of America. Big E finally told Rusev and Lana to make their way outside this country. Of course, Lana appeared, told Big E that pride comes before the fall, just for Rusev to use this distraction and beat down Big E from behind.

I’ve got a déjà vu about the main event match
Cena was the last one who needed to hype the WHC ladder match in seriously over-exaggerated style. And then, there was déjà vu all over again. Because we repeated the 4-on-3 handicap match from SmackDown. The line-up was the same: heels against faces and also this time the faces did win. The only difference was, that Super Reigns got slightly more ring time. He repeated his moveset exactly the same way like he did on SmackDown but then got some beating for being almost four minutes inside the ring. Plus: this time Sheamus got the win. But the faces weren’t able to celebrate for very long because the music of Kane hit for him to come out and beat down anyone. After this humiliation, Triple H appeared to introduce us to the eighth participant of the WHC ladder match. Makes sense, given that Kane was the chosen competitor against Daniel Bryan initially for the WHC match at MITB. Of course, Super Reigns afterwards had to spear Kane to make the actual match on Sunday even more dispensable. And this episode of RAW was finished with a stare-down between Triple H and Super Reigns. I wonder, if that was this super duper punishment, Reigns had to fear since SmackDown when Seth Rollins had told him that something really bad would happen on RAW. Also possible that he was just referring to the addition of Kane. But who fears Kane these days anyway?

I need 30min Dean Ambrose promos in my life

The best part of RAW was about to happen in the post-show or Fallout. Apparently, Dean Ambrose didn’t know already that he was finally in the match on Sunday. So, poor Tom Phillips was sent out backstage to inform him. Seriously, when Dean yelled at Tom, I wondered whether he would instantly die or at least cry in front of him. He looked seriously shocked. What Dean had to say, I’ve already tried to transcribe in the caption to the above shown collage.

Besides the content that is obviously very much different to that he had to say as a member of The Shield, it’s also important to notice his brilliant acting. He really is a natural because he didn’t do anything else in his life than wrestling and pretending to be someone else. Every gesture, every variation in his voice, every facial expression, even every pause. Everything seems just perfect. It looks and sounds like believable and fitting, and yes, I seriously want WWE to send him out on the streets or the nature or whatever with his own camera to do promos like the one of Rusev and Lana today. Like the ones, William Regal once did. Just go back to hand wrestlers, who can do something on their own, the freedom to create some unique stuff. You know, that Dean Ambrose is capable of doing that. So, let him do so! It will be epic.

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The Gifs to this once again epic blog post were brought to you by pathfindertifa, part 1 / part 2.