It was at least like a semi-sarcastic, flippant apology. But yeah, they booked a no-win spot where Becky would either look dumb or weak (or both) at the end.

I think the ultimate goal is still to make Becky a star with her winning at Mania, but they're overthinking this a lot. They had the easiest Mania story ever fall into their lap and are muddling it.

Did anyone else notice how strange the production was following the commercial after the finish of the triple threat women's tag match at the beginning of the show? By my recollection it was:

-Hello I am Elias
-Cut to Becky talking to Finn backstage
-Hello I am Elias
-Cut to long Seth Rollins Wrestlemania promo
-Hello I am Elias, interrupted by Lucha House Party.

it wasn't like an intentional trolling of Elias, it was a clear editing error, but it was just confusing as hell. Never seen anything like it.

holy hell the end of that was bad

could they telegraph Becky going over at WM any worse?

$5 says they have Becky show up on a Guinness truck and hose down Charlotte/the McMahons by end of this year

My nervous system seizes up whenever I'm reminded of how horribly cringeworthy JR's call was on the segment with Kurt Angle in the milk truck.

I think they think they're doing Stone Cold Becky Lynch, but they don't realize they're doing Big Show Becky Lynch. It's more likely she's crying on TV for her job soon.

It was either this and they covered it up well enough that I wasn't sure if it was planned or not.

Or it was planned and done so poorly that I wondered if it was intentional.

IT'S MILKOMANIA RUNNIN' WILD!!!

“Dairy Queen” was the real low point.

I'm curious if WWE can spin their own incompetence and tone-deafness into a positive again like they did with Becky's initial turn. That worked out because it galvanized Becky's support (the idea that the company didn't value her) and then they listened a tiny bit to the audience and let the story play out naturally. They can do that again here, since the company in non-kayfabe just spent two weeks hobbling her character, making her look stupid, and ruining her Mania match. She has a fairly definitive case in and out of kayfabe of not being valued by the company.

My guess is we're going to see some Stone Coldy antics, it'll be a triple threat, Becky will be really over again because she's Becky, and WWE will tell themselves they did the right thing even though the real money was in a one-on-one match with Rousey without any of this convoluted nonsense. If they have her beat Flair at Fastlane to take it back to a one on one match, this can still be salvaged, but they already seem to be trying to douse the nuclear heat between Becky and Ronda so who knows.

I understand if you want to use a gauntlet match to have someone get over on the world champ after he's already faced two or three guys. But Kofi ****ing Kingston pinned him in the first match. It's like the SD crew watched the incomprehensible booking on Raw last night and said, hold my beer...

Not a fan of the champion defending in an Elimination Chamber match to begin with. But if you're going to do that, the champion should be guaranteed spot #6 automatically.

Becky has prob been at her worst trying to channel her inner SCSA recently. The whole "Hey Steph, how's your face" was cringeworthy at best.

I think things will forever be bland until the evil authority McMahon management gimmick is done for good.

It makes no sense in kayfabe, and they've been doing it for literally 20+ years now.

You're right, but I certainly put it in the category of "things I would change but am sure will not change." They'll still be doing it in 10 years with someone even if Vince is dead. There's an attachment to it on the basis that it played a big part in a boom period, but perhaps even more than that (and particularly more than that if and when VKM kicks the bucket), it's a convenient plot device that allows them to be lazy and uncreative whenever they want to be.

It's even worse now. They literally change whether they are face or heel depending on the segment. If Becky's out there, they're heels. If it's Daniel Bryan, they're faces. They don't even know if they want to be booed or cheered anymore.

I don't think authority was necessary here, but I get why they did it and it at least makes some sense in this instance (Becky was basically legit held down and not pushed by management and got over in spite of WWE's portrayal of her). They want to throw obstacles in front of her and make this an epic ROAD TO WRESTLEMANIA so I get why they went this route. What really killed this sort of storyline was when they had Roman vs. the Authority for two years when nothing about Roman was organic or genuine compared to people like Stone Cold/Daniel Bryan/Becky.

I am at least hoping for a different spin on it this time. Triple H/Stephanie weren't overtly antagonistic towards her, accepted her apology, then seemed blindsided by Vince overruling them. If they align as consistent faceish figures opposed to Vince with the worked shoot aspect of him being an out of touch dictator, that is at least something kind of new. None of this is better than just doing the damn match, but McMahons gonna McMahon.

I can see the storyline now:

Vince sees the main event for Wrestlemania and doesn't know what a Becky Lynch is. Flair! That's a name he knows. In fact, he actually believes he's putting Ric Flair in the match.

The childrens have him declared senile and wrest control of the company away from Vince.

Vince is spiteful bastard though. So rather than allow the WWE to be run by someone else, he's bringing in the NWO to burn it all down. Evil twisted grin and Vince leaves by limo. The limo explodes on the way out.

The next week on Raw, we find that in his will, Vince has left all his shares to...Donald Trump. It was his payment for giving Linda a cabinet position.

Trump make a series of baffling choices in his first few weeks, while the kids contest the will, but we later come to find out the real owner of the WWE at this point is....Vladimir Putin!

Putin finally grants Rusev a world title shot. Even though he's not actually Russian, he's the closest thing he's got. Rusev reigns over the WWE for the next decade.

Does it mean that Rusev Day will officially exist?

I found this funny
https://www.wrestlinginc.com/news/20...we-raw-650855/

He just turned heel on him a few months ago and now he's supposed to give him some kinda pep talk. Ambrose don't give a **** anymore.

WWE app just sent out a potential spoiler for tonight that I wish they wouldn't have sent.

I'd have never thought Kofi would beat brock.

I don't know why I thought they might be creative enough to do something other than "these NXT guys are going to wrestle on Raw tonight" with them.

Hated that cold open. I don't understand the point of teasing/announcing debuts like that. Why not just have them premiere meaningfully and organically?

Also, Michael Cole's scripted "scouting report" on the NXT wrestlers was embarrassingly bad. The show opened with HHH in the ring and nothing from any of the commentators, all of a sudden right on cue Cole goes into some clearly scripted unnatural monologue.

Also, specifically on Ciampa's scouting report, it was so awkwardly bad hearing Cole talk about how despicable a man he is while showing 0 emotion and clearly just reading a script.

Like, come on man, pretend to be a human being and not a robot.

I think this is WWE getting things wrong. Thinking that NXT is the larger audience and where they are going wrong is very much an excuse for bad lazy booking and storylines.

That being said for a raw I'm watching in whole I'm happy to see all of them wrestle rather than nothing matches.

It's a real shame Corbin went from potential but boring to a really good heel authority figure to boring. He should really be dominating smaller guys in matches on a regular basis so that he can give them the rub. Having him v braun a million times doesn't seem to accomplish anything other than Bruan is slightly bigger so wins slightly more.