Vince McMahon BOOKING WWE! Brock Lesnar Cody Rhodes TURN! WWE Raw! | WrestleTalk

In this WrestleTalk News, Vince McMahon is back controlling creative in WWE, Vince McMahon is back controlling creative in WWE and Vince McMahon is back controlling creative in WWE. If you watched Raw last night you might have been thinking ‘damn, this sure feels like a Vince show’ and hey, it was! Good on you for noticing. Now let’s talk about it. While appearing on CNBC’s Squawk in the Box to address not only the merger with Endeavour but also the allegations against him last year and his role going forward in WWE. Vince would say in regards to creative

that he would be involved at a higher level than before but not “in the weeds” like he once was. But looking at last night’s Raw, it was only weeds. Matt Riddle came back too, coincidence? Ahead of the show, Fightful Select would provide a planned rundown of the show’s segments and matches, however some of these ‘planned’ matches ended up not coming to fruition. With two women’s triple-threat matches being cut and replaced by the opening Omos vs Elias bout and a women’s tag-match in the final third. These were a part of a number of “late changes” according

to Fightful Select, with the That’s Freakin Wrestling Podcast tweeting that they were seated behind production at Raw last night, and the team were handed updated

sheets of information three times in 45 minutes, two of those being after the show was on air. These last-minute changes were noted as not feeling like those that talent and staff had come to expect under Triple H’s regime according to PWInsider. During the show, Wrestlevotes would tweet that they had been told “Raw has a large Vince McMahon feel and presence to it”. NO KIDDING BUD. And while PWInsider noted that Triple

H was on headsets running the show at the beginning of the night, Vince would become “more and more involved”, eventually becoming the “point person running the show”. PWInsider reported that this triggered a huge negative shift in morale for many talent upon realizing that things were back to “exactly were they were” prior to Vince’s exit. Another source would state that the “place felt nuked”, upon the realization from many that McMahon would likely be overseeing everything again going forward. While some were reportedly resigned to the fact that Vince would be back in creative “eventually” many were obviously

quite dejected, largely due to Triple H’s close connection with talent, many of which he had worked with previously in NXT. However, one thing was for sure, according to multiple sources PWInsider noted there was “no doubt” Vince was back in charge for last night’s Raw. This is all despite Triple H, WWE President Nick Khan and Chief Financial Officer Frank Riddick holding a talent meeting prior to Raw according to Fightful Select, where they mentioned that the creative direction of the product wouldn’t change. Twitter user Trevor Dame had a great tweet to say: “Vince went from “He’s retired”

to “He’s only back to facilitate a sale” to “Ok he’s minimally involved in creative” to “He’s only big picture creative, not details” to “Vince just sent a note two hours into Raw saying ‘Brock should smash’” He’s back. There is absolutely tons more to dissect from these revelations, so check out wrestletalk.com for more. And now it’s time for my review of Monday Night Raw aka… yeah… pretty sure Vince is back edition of Monday Night Raw… in about 5 sad minutes. The show opened however with the other Vince McMahon of WWE – the actual head of creative

Triple H. “Head of Creative”. He cut a promo about how great WWE is and how – even on the day of the sale and merger with UFC – WWE will always be WWE and they are here to stay. It was a good promo and it was nice to see Triple H get a pop and reaction from the crowd. Also I’m loving how much Triple H just looks so much like Obadiah Stane now. ‘Vince McMahon was able to build this Company in a cave! With a box of scraps!” He then brought out Roman Reigns, Solo Sikoa

and Paul Heyman – still bedecked with gold but without The Usos with them. They leant into the heat they got from the crowd and talked about how they beat Cody Rhodes at WrestleMania because of course he did, he’s Roman Reigns. Cody came out to accept that Roman beat him, but he knows that Reigns knows that Cody had him beat. If it wasn’t for Solo, he’d be standing here as the Undisputed Champion. He also only wanted to ask for one thing: a rematch. Heyman and Reigns turned down his offer for a title match tonight, so Cody

counter-offered a tag match instead. Heyman agreed under two provisos: 1. It has to be someone who wrestled at Mania – which would rule out returning stars like Randy Orton, Matt Riddle, an NXT call-up, or even someone like Jay White – and 2: whoever walks down that ramp will never get a shot at Roman Reigns for the title. This is a crucial stip. Whoever sides with Rhodes, will be damning themselves into never challenging for the world title – just as Cody had done to himself in All Elite Wrestling. And who should answer this partnership, but Brock

Lesnar. This is great for two reasons. 1: it will be fun to see Cody and Brock team together and 2: Brock already cannot challenge for Roman’s titles. It was a very good opening segment, and it hyped up a lot as a WrestleMania Calibur Main Event… which is a classic Vince bit of commentary. Just a little red flag, there. Backstage, Heyman sent The Usos back to the private jet to start the celebration early – pretending that Roman Reigns was too busy to speak with them as he and Solo were preparing for their tag match. It was

then revealed that Heyman was just doing the bidding of Roman, who didn’t want his cousins around. Reigns was also concerned that Paul Heyman knew that Brock was going to answer the call, which is a call-back to the ‘whose side is he on’ storyline that ate up a lot of the Brock/Roman feud before last year’s Mania. It almost felt like a tease for another Roman vs. Brock match which… is another red flag. That was basically the first 45 minutes of the show. A lot of talking. Hope we can have some wrestling soon. Oh, here comes Omos

to wrestle Elias. You’ll never guess what happened! Omos was cumbersome and won to no reaction in 100 seconds. This experiment is done and over, and I don’t know what any point this might have anymore. Also that was a whole hour of professional wrestling show Monday Night Raw – commercial free by the way – with 100 seconds of wrestling. Who wants another red flag? And if that wasn’t bad enough, the show was also pretty much all downhill from here. In fairness, it wasn’t all bad. Rey Mysterio cut a promo to thank everyone for his very lovely

Mania weekend where he spanked his son with a belt, and was interrupted by Austin Theory to set up a match between the two. Rey had it won, but Dominik Mysterio and Damian Priest ran down to interfere to allow Theory to hit A-Town Down for the win. Afterwards, Dom beat up Rey some more and then got in the face of Bad Bunny at ringside who had also cut a promo to hype that he is the host of Backlash in Puerto Rico. The two got physical, and Priest stepped in to remind us all of their shared history.

Priest then decked Bad Bunny and chokeslammed him through the announce table. It was an effective angle, and sets up a tag match of Judgement Day vs. Rey and Bad Bunny for Backlash. Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn – you guessed it – cut a promo and laid out an open challenge for any tag team to step up. The Street Profits stepped up following their win at WrestleMania, and had the longest match of the night at 12 whole minutes where KO and Sami picked up the win. Oddly, despite their whole story being about taking down The Bloodline,

it never played into their promo. It was instead a “we deserve this” promo. Much odder, however, was Seth’s segment. So here’s what happened. Seth cut a promo on Logan Paul backstage and then said he wanted to hear the crowd sing his theme song. So he walked to the ring. We cut to commercial, and when we came back Seth was enjoying people singing his theme. And then he left. That was it. That was the whole segment. I have no idea what this was, or what the point of it was. It works for a live audience, but

it translated terribly to TV. Bronson Reed set up a program with Bobby Lashley who also appeared to still be stalked by Uncle Howdy, and then Bobbles beat Mustafa Ali in 40 seconds. Well, it was better than what he did at WrestleMania. Bianca Belair came out to – you guessed it – do a promo about her win at Mania and was interrupted by Rhea Ripley to tease a potential title unification match down the line. She also stared down Raquel Rodriguez as she passed her and Liv Morgan, who had a tag match against Damage CTRL where the

winner would get a shot at the tag titles next week. Now I know what you’re thinking: didn’t both of these teams lose at Mania? And you’d be right, here’s a red flag for you. Liv and Raquel won, which really sucks for Damage CTRL who can’t buy a win. You’ll never guess what came next: it was only another bloody in-ring promo. This one was from The Miz who was interrupted by a returning Matt Riddle who laid him out with the Bro Derek. As is customary for a returning or debuting star, you have to be involved with

The Miz somehow. He’s the Mizcard Vortex. And not even Matt Riddle can escape The Mizcard Vortex (old shrinking gimmick). Team BeXtreme cut a promo – sigh – about their tag match next week and slightly teased a Trish heel turn which has been previously reported. And the main event was the much-anticipated match of The Bloodline taking on Cody Rhodes and Brock Lesnar. But there’s only 10 minutes left of the show – I know Brock matches are short… – oh no wait Brock Lesnar just turned heel on Cody Rhodes and beat him around ringside including an F5

through the announce table and an F5 on the stairs. This angle… split opinions. We did a poll on our WrestleTalk Podcast review of the show and it was 45% saying it was a good angle, and 55% saying it was bad. I fall more into the ‘good’ category. This keeps Cody away from Roman so you can tease out that rematch a bit longer, but keeps him in a main event angle. But I think the reason I liked the main event angle is because it was at least… something on this show. Outside of the Bad Bunny angle,

this was a boring mess. You could tell it was a show that was re-written multiple times in its first hour – some more red flags for you, sir – and it didn’t feel like a Triple H episode of TV. It did, however, feel a bit Vince-like. Honestly, this was a terrible Raw After Mania – it had around thirty minutes of in-ring wrestling on a three hour broadcast. And so much talking that didn’t achieve a lot. But it was slightly saved by two decent angles. So I can’t give this a 1 out of 5. But I

can certainly give it 2 out of 5.