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WWE NETWORK REVIEW: RAW TALK
NOVEMBER 16, 2020
REVIEW BY NICK MORGAN, PWTORCH CONTRIBUTOR
Hosts: Charly Caruso and R Truth
This week’s guests: Sheamus, Asuka, and The New Day (Kofi Kingston & Xavier Woods)
– R Truth started off the voice over as Charly was having some microphone issues. As things settled down Charly took over promoting the upcoming Survivor Series on Sunday. Truth and Charly shared some banter and sold the championship match between Drew McIntyre and Randy Orton while clips of the match played on the split screen. They sold the rest of the card at Survivor Series going through each match and clearly favoring “Team Red”, oh brother, please stop this.
– While discussing the dissention on the Raw men’s Survivor Series team, Sheamus’ music played, and he came out as the first case. Before anything, he praised Drew’s victory, keeping alive the angle of his friendship with Drew, which has been interesting over the last few weeks. Charly redirected the conversation back to the Survivor Series and the dissention on the team. Sheamus went off on A.J. as the supposed captain, and that he should be captain and that he could bring everything together and bring the victory to the Raw team.
– Charly brought up why there should be so much competition between the members of the team and that there should not be any captain and they should just all get along. Of course, Sheamus took it wrong and said she was right, but he needs to be the captain to bring everyone together. Perfect delusional heel. After this Sheamus went through the Smackdown team and sold all of them, very good to build up the opponents!
– With that Charly said good night and they moved on to the next guest: Asuka, who came on and started dancing with R Truth. The segment was pretty short as Asuka still struggles with English, but with the help of Charly and R Truth, Asuka was able to do her promo without resorting to the yelling in Japanese. I was happy to see that they made the effort to have Asuka speak in English and make her points. Good job here by everyone.
– With a final, “Nobody is ready for Asuka”, they moved onto the New Day, Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods. Always great talkers, Kingston and Woods just took control of the segment, selling their win over the Hurt Business on Raw and their upcoming Survivor Series match versus the Street Profits. Very good bit: Kofi said you can not trust people with two first names and they beat two of them tonight: Cedric Alexander and Sheldon Benjamin. R Truth went nuts.
– The New Day said that while they respect the Street Profits, but the New Day has been doing this a long time and they are not ready to give up the top spot just yet. Charly turned the conversation to their missing member, Big E. Asking them how they feel about not having Big E around. Both Kofi and Xavier said that they see things as the New Day covering both brands and that is only good. Charly brought up the possibility the Big E could be the final member of Team Smackdown (foreshadowing?????) and how that would make them feel. Kofi and Xavier both said that would be great for Big E, and there are no problems there as their New Day brotherhood-ness far surpasses any team red/team blue stuff. (Again, some possible foreshadowing given Big E’s interaction with the Street Profits on Smackdown in recent weeks.)
– Xavier ended the segment with a nice straight into the camera promo, building up the Street Profits, but stating clearly and without doubt that your boys, The New Day!, will win.
– With that Charly wrapped up, again going through all the Survivor Series matches and telling everyone to be sure to watch.
FINAL THOUGHTS: Just want to take a quick moment here to commend WWE’s use of the split screen here showing events from Raw that inform the conversation during the show. It is a great use of the split screen and reminds the viewer of some big spot or moment in a match that adds to the discussions going on.
Over the past few weeks, I have been down a bit on R Truth and his over-the-top act, but this week Truth came through with flying colors. He added some levity, but mostly stayed out of Charly’s way as she moved the show along and added to the show by just adding his personality without overdoing it. Big kudos to R Truth this week!
The show was strong this week with all the guests giving good performances and doing a good job in not just promoting Survivor Series but throwing out some breadcrumbs on possible storylines going forward. Sheamus was engaging and despite being a heel was enjoyable to watch, I might even say that I “liked” him. This fits with the angle with Drew and I am interested to see where this goes. Asuka came off great and rather than just ranting and raving actually engaged with he hosts and provided information and built on her likability and babyface-ness. Finally, The New Day did their things. At times their act can get a bit old, but tonight, while they were clearly the same team, they added a bit of an edge that kept me engaged as they travelled down a well-worn path.
At 26-plus minutes the show is an easy watch and generally fun.
Well, that is it for now, see you all next week. Until then, take care and stay safe.
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