Monday Night RAW From Hell 2018-2019
Added 2024-12-23 19:00:05 +0000 UTCWatch: https://streamable.com/sg7bbl
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As for 2019 Seth vs AJ was really really damn good, he mentions this in the video but Seth's early time with the universal championship was a high point for RAW. Seth and AJ was a dream match at the time, and the two fought for the first time ever at money in the bank 2019 and ripped the roof off doing so. At the royal rumble Sasha Banks challenged Ronda Rousey to a fight for the Raw Women's championship that paid off at Money in the Bank. This was earlier in Rondas run and the fans hadn't quite soured on her yet, and I thought they had a great build that turned into a damn near perfect match. In early 2019 this was an easy highlight coming out of 2018s Raw As much as people didn't want Ronda in the WrestleMania women's title picture, I thought the build to Becky 2 belts was pretty incredible, and these women mauled each other week after week building towards the WrestleMania match. Rey Mysterio and Cesaro had a really great match kinda out of nowhere on RAW, it was so full of reversals and showed off just how talented both men were. It was really up there for matches they gave away on TV This guy kinda rips into the Cedric janitor bit, but completely leaves out the unreal match that Cedric and Drew had that August that was maybe the best match of Cedric's entire time in WWE. For my money it's even better than the cruiserweight classic matches that caused fans to beg WWE to sign him to a contract. I think that Sasha and Becky had a really good build towards their hell in a cell match, and for my money they then had the best women's hell in a cell match of all time. So while a lot of RAW felt like it dragged in this two year time period, there was usually at least one story line that was worth paying attention to between PPVs. And there were high spots on the show that I truly loved despite not liking a lot of writing going on for other people on the shows these matches took place in. Yes, late Vince Era writing and booking was bad, but the talent in WWE (and definitely in NXT in the mid to late 2010s) always has stuff they want to show you and prove how good they are. I just wish more of them got the chance to be great
G_Rez
2025-02-25 09:32:17 +0000 UTCOk, so as I said I'm not a fan of pure negativity content, so I will now stand on my soap box and talk about things I liked in raw of 2018 and eat all the bullets for it In February there was a gauntlet match that I think established Seth Rollins as "The Guy" on the show as he fought for over an hour including needing to fight Roman Reigns and John Cena as back to back entrants. I got on a huge gauntlet match kick after this and was crazy excited to see them finally make it to the video game recently. Woken Matt Hardy had come to WWE and had a program with Bray Wyatt before his transition to being fiend, which led to the Ultimate Deletion match that you saw. I thought this was some silly fun, even if it wasn't as great as some of the ones broken matt did in TNA. What I loved was that this then transitioned into a Matt Hardy Bray Wyatt tag team run where they played off each other's freak and you could tell these two were having a great time together. The Deleters of Worlds rocked In August Roman Reigns had a pretty good match with Finn Balor for the universal title on RAW. Braun would attempt to cash in on Roman but the shield reunited in order to protect Roman. While Roman wasn't over as a singles guy, everyone still loved the Shield and seeing them together in this brief window before Romans cancer incident was something I and a lot of other people did genuinely enjoy 2018 was the time when Drew had returned to the main roster, and he looked insane. He started in a tag team with Dolph Ziggler, which I know a lot of people felt that Drew was wasted in, but I love Ziggler and I think that the two of them together was great, and they had a damn fine match against Seth and Dean at hell in a cell in 2018. Setting up Drew's feud against the Shield that lasted until the shields literal last day While backlash 2018 had the worst ending of maybe any ppv that year, it did have Seth Rollins vs the Miz for the IC Title in a match I will defend to the death. These two guys rip eachother apart trying to make the IC title matter in an era where it kept being pushed aside. These men ran so Gunther could sprint
G_Rez
2025-02-25 09:13:04 +0000 UTCSo, I'm generally not a fan of pure negatively content, but I'm also not going to defend the writing of RAW in this time period. We were trapped in an era where we'd often hear reports that Vince had ripped up the script the day of the show and things were being booked as the show was airing. Characters would flipflop, storylines would drop, and the third hour of raw was borderline unbearable. AEW got a massive boom because it was an alternative to WWE were people could go to to see anything other than Vince's booking. This video at several points tries to illustrate how bad this era is by reading out the roster, and, genuinely as maybe the biggest Baron Corbin hater there is, I do not blame the roster for the quality of this show. They were given bad scripts, they were expected to recite the scripts exactly as they were written, and those scripts would also change on them unexpectedly. They were booked into dead end feuds and placed in 2-7 minute matches on a three hour wrestling show where they didn't get to show off that they were genuinely talented people. WWE in this era had a way of sapping the enthusiasm and passion out of the people working there. I think the peak of how bad WWE had gotten was Backlash 2018, in which during the Main Event of Roman Reigns vs Samoa Joe, you can literally watch thousands of paying fans get up out of their seats on hard cam to leave and beat traffic instead of watch Roman Wins Lol. These were dark and brutal times
G_Rez
2025-02-25 08:50:34 +0000 UTCIt should probably be noted that A LOT of AEW's early buzz came from it NOT being WWE. Raw being what it was... was kind of a boon for them at the time.
Willow Falls
2025-01-27 08:50:26 +0000 UTCI.... HATED the Revival - Lucha House Party Lucha Rules matches. You could take Roger Ebert's review of the movie North, change up a few things to make it apply to those matches, and for me, it'd be accurate. Seemed like it was The Revival vs ALL THREE MEMBERS of The Lucha House Party EVERY WEEK, with the Lucha House Party winning all those matches, (and they were presented as babyfaces through this). End result of this was me strongly disliking Lucha House Party, (which I never got over), and me feeling excited for The Revival when they finally went to AEW. Also, I remember Dean Ambrose/Jon Moxley having some... very harsh words... in interviews talking about his whole germaphobe angle. I think I remember him talking about working hurt, not missing ANYTHING, and doing anything and everything that was asked of him, so to avoid having WWE add time onto his contract, so that he could leave as soon as he possibly could.
Willow Falls
2025-01-27 08:46:58 +0000 UTCThis time period was worse than he described it. I can say “it was bad” all day but I can’t describe how genuinely awful WWE (not NXT) was at the time. NXT was the only thing keeping me into wrestling
Wilson Simons
2025-01-17 02:40:05 +0000 UTCThe channel that did the big Roman video was Super Eyepatch Wolf. In that clip where Bayley tackled Banks, there’s a moment afterwards where Bayley tells “You ain’t shit!” And it gets picked up on the camera mic.
Steamed Ham Champion Dillon Haggett
2024-12-29 05:03:59 +0000 UTCEven then with KofiMania, the moment was great, everything after not so much. Kofi got stuck feuding with Ziggler for two months.
Steamed Ham Champion Dillon Haggett
2024-12-27 09:52:58 +0000 UTCBeing three hours didn’t help matters.
Steamed Ham Champion Dillon Haggett
2024-12-27 09:51:40 +0000 UTCI’ve not watched this video yet so I don’t know if it was mentioned, but remember when they started randomly doing 2 out of 3 falls matches on every show so the wrestlers would have to stand around for the entire ad break in between falls?
Steamed Ham Champion Dillon Haggett
2024-12-27 09:51:09 +0000 UTCIt was actually worse than he explained it. I was a lifelong viewer and stopped watching until the 2022. NXT was the only saving grace, but then Vince’s constant panic call ups ruined that for me as well.
THECRIMSON FUQER
2024-12-25 14:21:27 +0000 UTCOh man. THAT episode. I feel sorry for you lol.
Chad
2024-12-24 17:39:49 +0000 UTCIt was honestly probably worse than he described. I remember they'd do the same matches every week for like six weeks and then just drop the storyline and then do a new set of matches for the next six weeks and nothing in the continuity made sense. I'd been watching since the 90s but I had to quit after watching this stuff. I've kinda blocked the bad stuff out of my mind. This brings back horrifying memories for me lol.
Chad
2024-12-24 17:36:19 +0000 UTCHonestly, he makes this era sound more fun than it actually was. I'm a life-long wrestling fan and 2017-2019 WWE made me quit WWE completely. It was actually worse than 2000 WCW. I was only watching some very sporadic clips. Only started watching WWE again in late 2023.
.
2024-12-24 17:10:27 +0000 UTCNXT was this company’s saving grace. Even for a dedicated fan who’s been watching since 2010 it was hard to watch. Raw SUCKED during this time period. Half of everything that happened felt like a blur.
Snazzyway
2024-12-24 13:42:52 +0000 UTCThere are some people out there who will say to your face that Triple H is an awful booker and it was better with Vince. Those people were not watching from 2017 to 2022. And some of the stuff that has come out about Vince’s… tastes makes a lot of the more weird stuff make a lot more sense.
Ryan Redd
2024-12-24 05:29:51 +0000 UTCParty Brock is IN THE HOOOOUSE TONIIIIIGHT
LisWolf
2024-12-24 04:43:45 +0000 UTCDude, I’ve loved wrestling since I was six years old in 2003, and never, never have I ever, not even during the pandemic, have I felt it be more of a chore than in those two years. I was a fan since 2003, but I started watching SmackDown Weekly in 2007, and RAW weekly in 2009, long story short, I went to a boarding school that wouldn’t let me stay up late to watch raw during those years, but on the weekends I was home in time to watch SmackDown, And while I’m one of those rare people who will probably never quit watching wrestling no matter how bad it gets, so I actually sat through every single episode of RAW from this era, but it was my least favorite show that I watched. During this time, NXT was cooking, and so was NJPW, and at the tail end of 2019 when AEW got weekly television, I loved it, not such a big fan now, but it sure was exciting at the beginning. Honestly, as this video was happening, I was actually thinking that the way he was describing things made them sound better than they actually were, out of context, Some of the things he was talking about might not have sounded quite so bad, or even funny or somewhat quirky and entertaining on the face of them, but trust me, they weren’t, they were awful, abysmal, in fact, I don’t think that the English language adequately possesses the adjectives necessary in order to properly convey The utter atrocity that was Monday Night RAW from 2018 and 2019. Y’all should honestly thank the good Lord every day that y’all started watching when y’all did, and I think we can confidently say that no matter whether or not the WWE remains as hot as it is right now, that at worst, it will probably never be that bad again.
Ian Hernandez
2024-12-24 00:52:30 +0000 UTCIt was every bit as bad as the creator described. The only thing that kept me connected to WWE at the time is that I was wildly into NXT. Out of habit I would watch RAW edited on Hulu or the highlights on YouTube most weeks and even condensed down or in highlight form it was very tough to watch.
John Cowheel
2024-12-23 21:51:50 +0000 UTCTriple H's NXT saved my wrestling fandom in these years. KofiMania in 2019 was amazing but that was all Smackdown
Shaun Carpenter
2024-12-23 21:29:31 +0000 UTCHe was right wwe was at all time bad then same matches everyweek there was no long stories just week to week people who worked wwe told dirtsheets the creative writers say have written up whole show and vince would look at runsheet and say we ain't doing that he rip it up and book raw hr before the show starts them shows were brutal oh I agree if u seen a 2019 raw as ur first show after u watch it ur be like ah im good I ain't watching that again that sucked wwe then was wcw 2000 bad
Ryan Evans
2024-12-23 21:26:52 +0000 UTCThe issue with that time period (especially 2019) was there were some genuinely incredible moments. Some of my favorite moments of all time, in fact. Mainly from WrestleMania 35. Kofi Kingston finally winning the WWE Title. Becky winning in the main event (of a triple threat that had Charlotte shoehorned in for no reason when Becky vs Ronda was RIGHT THERE), The Fiend as a whole. The problem came when there was anything good, the always ruined it. Kofi lost the title to Brock in about 8 seconds, Becky went on to have an underwhelming title reign that ended when she got pregnant and had to give the title to MITB winner Asuka in what was a genuinely heartwarming segment, but Vince should've just listened to hear and let her put over Shayna at Mania the month prior to create a new star, and The Fiend was basically almost immediately ruined by the HIAC debacle before being forced to win the title, only to drop it to Goldberg a few months later. So yes, there were bright spots in a sea of pretty unwatchable garbage, and they always managed to ruin those bright spots. It's this time period that we really need to thank the wrestling Gods for NXT and the creation of AEW, because without those, American pro wrestling would've been absolutely cooked.
DAVESTO - David Ausbun
2024-12-23 21:08:27 +0000 UTCYes, that was the worst period of time for me as a WWE fan. From 2018-2019 the only WWE show that I was following weekly was Black&Gold NXT. And fortunatelly it was great enough for me not to stop watching wrestling at all! So shout out to Triple H, who legitimately saved my passion during these horrible years!
TheBlueOne
2024-12-23 20:49:54 +0000 UTCNia getting beat by Alexa I'll just say I felt like such a bitch to keep watching. So you know that plus more I just stopped
Diruroru
2024-12-23 20:32:33 +0000 UTCI watched threw all of it🤣 painful memories
WWE Jay Gaming
2024-12-23 20:30:21 +0000 UTCReally nothing could get really over and when it did they would kill the heat accidentally. Ahh times
Diruroru
2024-12-23 20:29:55 +0000 UTCBraun was cool back then
Diruroru
2024-12-23 20:28:45 +0000 UTCI wonder if you started watching during this time, if you would have stuck with it or not. I guess good timing when you started watching it.
Christopher Barnes
2024-12-23 20:08:32 +0000 UTCHe wasn't being harsh, it was horrible. I started watching WWE in 2016, and 2016/17 was really good for WWE, to the point where by Wrestlemania 36 in 2020 I was convinced that I must have just had rose tinted glasses for my first year watching. But no, 18, 19 and 20 were just that bad. There are other bad things he missed too, like the Corbin/Roman dogfood segment, DX v Brothers of Destruction, Goldberg beating the Fiend for the title, Brock squashing Kofi for the title, etc. The only good things I remember from that time were AJ and Samoa Joe's feud, Daniel Bryan's 'Planet's Champion' run, and the initial Ambrose heel turn. The rest of the heel run can go fuck itself but the actual turn on the night Roman vacated the title was gold.
Charlie
2024-12-23 20:07:26 +0000 UTCYeah, there were some shining moments, but they were short lived before they were ruined.
Brandon McCachren
2024-12-23 19:51:02 +0000 UTCYeah, this time period in WWE was about as bad as he made it out to be. WWE being as bad as it was played a huge role in AEW's initial success, as this was around the time AEW started. Your point about Vince shooting from the hip was correct. It was very common to read that Vince made them rewrite the entire show only a few short hours before the show started. Many wrestlers have talked about not knowing what they were going to be doing that night until hours or sometimes minutes before they went on. With that said, the one bright spot for me, at least, was the rise of Becky Lynch. But that was more in spite of Vince rather than anything he did. Becky got herself over so much at Survivor Series 2018 that even Vince couldn't ruin it. Though he definitely tried by shoehorning Charlotte Flair into Becky and Ronda's match at Wrestlemania.
Drew Or Die
2024-12-23 19:50:27 +0000 UTCYeah, these times were rough. I actually went to one of the shows during this time at the end of 2019. That was my only time going to a show live. It was the Dec. 27 2019 edition of Smackdown that I went to.
Christopher Barnes
2024-12-23 19:50:15 +0000 UTCIt sucked.
Dak4life
2024-12-23 19:27:26 +0000 UTC
