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Why WWE’s Horrendous Build for the MSG Show Destroyed Sep. 28 Raw

By Rob Wolkenbrod

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Last night’s episode of WWE Raw drew a very mixed reaction. Why was this the case?

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Coming into last night’s episode of Raw, it was obvious this show was going to be a throwaway. It was one week after the post-WWE Night of Champions show and three weeks away from the big go-home Raw before WWE Hell in a Cell. However, this was also the last show before the MSG live event that’s being broadcast on the WWE Network this Saturday, so they did have a show to build.

Unfortunately, Raw did prove to be lackluster. The show started hot with John Cena and the WWE United States Championship Open Challenge but went downhill afterwards.

ALSO ON DAILY DDT: Ranking All 30 WWE Hell in a Cell Matches

So why did Raw fail last night?

In case you didn’t hear Michael Cole plug it about fifteen times, WWE is having a house show from Madison Square Garden broadcast on the WWE Network this Saturday. You may have also heard the Superstars mentioning the show multiple times.

WWE’s horrible build for the MSG show from last night can be a post dissected into about fifteen but that’s excessive. To sum it up, there was way too much Big Show.

Show is set to face Brock Lesnar this Saturday, leaving WWE with the impossible task of building up the World’s Largest Athlete as a viable challenger. He has squashed Cesaro multiple times in one of the more bizarre booking decisions on recent episodes of Raw and then turned his sights to Mark Henry last night for the two-hundredth time. Putting Show and Henry in a ring together to sell the MSG show is horrible. No one wants to see these two wrestle and even more so, no one wants to see Show get pushed.

Putting these two in a match after Cena, New Day and The Dudley Boyz opened the show hot was disappointing. The crowd was uninterested and so were the fans at home. How do we go from that to this?

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    • Unfortunately for WWE, they backed themselves into a corner where they had to push Show for this match. They’ve made Lesnar the focus of this show so his opponent has to be tough. They didn’t have to do this with the Japan show in July because Kevin Owens vs. Finn Balor for the NXT Championship sold the fans on watching.

    So later in the show, WWE decides to have Paul Heyman come out for a promo. I was very excited when Heyman was coming to the ring before the commercial. He’s so entertaining to listen to speak and can probably sell you on buying a pen. One would think he would try to sell the fans on not only the MSG show but the main event of WWE Hell in a Cell between Lesnar and Undertaker inside Hell in a Cell. This would be the perfect time to bring it up for the first time in a segment since it was announced last Sunday in a generic promo, right?

    Wrong.

    Heyman talked about the MSG match and tried selling us on it. Originally, the build was good but as it progressed, you thought to yourself “Wait, something is wrong with this picture” once Hell in a Cell was not mentioned once.

    Instead, it turned into Show coming down to the ring to confront a seemingly annoyed Heyman, who walked out of the ring after he got yelled at (Wouldn’t be surprised if his anger was real). We were supposed to buy Show as an intimidating and threatening presence to Lesnar because he scared off Heyman and said he’ll beat his client.

    Hey, WWE, did you think we forgot about this?

    We also barely heard a word about the U.S. Championship, the Intercontinental Championship and Tag Team Championship being defended this Saturday. Actually, I don’t believe any of these matches were mentioned. Did you know that Kevin Owens is defending the IC Championship against Chris Jericho? How about Seth Rollins facing John Cena inside a steel cage for the U.S. title? Not even New Day defending the WWE Tag Team Championship against The Dudley Boyz? Oh, you didn’t know?

    Wait, that’s right, WWE spent too much time building up a glorified squash match.

    You can follow Rob Wolkenbrod on Twitter @RealRobWolkey. If you would like to send a report from a live event, email us at trebor5227@yahoo.com.

    Next: WWE Raw Review

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