WWE Raw Results: Highlights, Analysis, and Grades for March 6

Source: WWE.com

Raw is full speed ahead towards WrestleMania. On Monday, the fallout from WWE Fastlane was addressed, including the status of the Universal Championship.

Previously on WWE Raw, the build to Fastlane finished up. And last night was Fastlane, so let’s talk about that!

In last night’s main event, Goldberg followed through on his promise. Thanks to a well-timed appearance by Chris Jericho, Kevin Owens only managed to last 21 seconds before falling. Spear, Jackhammer, 1-2-3 – and Goldberg is now the WWE Universal Champion. Brock Lesnar gets his wish at WrestleMania – a shot to take the title from Goldberg. Both men were in the building for Raw. Did their paths collide?

In other Fastlane developments, a pair of streaks ended. Bayley defeated Charlotte Flair to retain the Raw Women’s Championship. It was Charlotte’s first pay-per-view loss in a championship match. But Sasha Banks made her presence felt during the match. With a less than clean finish, what is the state of the Women’s Championship?

And Braun Strowman threw everything he had at Roman Reigns last night. But nothing was enough, as the Big Dog withstood it to earn a victory. Strowman is unaccustomed to losing matches. Did he take the loss in stride, or create chaos instead?

Related Story: WWE WrestleMania 33: Match Card Predictions, Post-Fastlane

Also on the card for tonight: Seth Rollins provides an exclusive look at his rehabilitation. Rollins is determined to be active for WrestleMania, and he’s letting the WWE Universe see what he’s going through. There’s also a Cruiserweight Championship match scheduled; former champion Rich Swann takes on Neville for the gold.

Please continue reading for all the results and highlights from WWE Raw for March 6.

Chris Jericho Gets A Hero’s Welcome

It’s both nice and a little upsetting to see Jericho getting such a big pop from the crowd. On the one hand, he absolutely deserves it based on everything he’s done over the past several months. He’s been killing it week in and week out.

On the other hand, though, Good Guy Jericho has always been garbage when compared to Sniveling Weasel Bad Guy Jericho. If he’s getting the good crowd reactions, my fear is his behavior will change to match those reactions. That means awesome Y2J would go away. There was even a bit of pandering to the crowd during this segment. Ugh.

Anyway, Jericho is out to get answers from Kevin Owens. Seems perfectly reasonable. Owens hedges, but finally admits that he never stabbed his best friend in the back. That’s because Jericho was never his best friend in his eyes. To Owens, Jericho was just a “tool” to protect him and the championship. And, according to Owens, it was all Triple H’s idea.

It’s actually pretty brilliant – for the Raw writing team, at least. This is actually tying together a whole bunch of loose threads. Triple H randomly showed up just before the Festival of Friendship for an impromptu conversation with Owens. Heck, we even get the Sami Zayn history brought up again.

In the end, the long rumored KO-Jericho match for the US Title at WrestleMania is set. Should be a great match. We also get a brawl that sees Samoa Joe joining to help Owens, and Zayn runs in for the save of Jericho. Got your back, maaaaaaaaan.

Sami Zayn vs. Kevin Owens

Result: Kevin Owens defeated Sami Zayn via pinfall

Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars

This is at least the second match between these two former best friends since their final match at Battleground. Glad Mick Foley is a man who sticks to his guns!

I’ll forgive it because there’s a lot of good stuff going on here. First, Foley avoided being possessed by the Ghost of Teddy Long. I could have sworn that when the commercial break was over, we’d be joining a tag team match in progress. Good for Mick!

Turns out this is the first of two singles matches to come out of the opening segment. And, as most Steen/Owens vs. Generico/Zayn matches, it’s pretty good for what it is. There’s not a lot of time devoted to it – feels like I say that about Raw a lot – but it’s jam packed.

In this one, Sami gets ultimately done in by his exuberance. He knocks Owens to the outside, but rather than listen to the official and wait for KO to get back in, he goes for the big dive over the ref. In doing so, he tweaks his knee, and is slow getting up once he’s in the ring. This allows Owens the time to recuperate to hit the first of two pop-up powerbombs.

KO picks up a strong victory, with Jericho getting a shot at Samoa Joe later in the night. Triple H’s apparent new incarnation of an Evolution-type group is off to a decent start.

WWE Cruiserweight Championship Match

Neville (c) vs. Rich Swann

Result: Neville defeated Rich Swann via submission

Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars

Even before this one started, you could hear the Chicago crowd perking up – just with “CM Punk” chants instead of interest in the match. In my head, I was pulling for these two to just basically put on a Dragon Gate match and hope the agents in the back were too busy to notice. It would have gotten the crowd on their side real quick.

But the start we got was pretty good. Swann came out like a maniac, which was great. The entire 205 Live division has been stymied by exciting wrestlers being forced to wrestle generic, boring WWE heavyweight-style matches. It’s not what these guys got popular by doing, you know?

But Swann got stopped in a big way right before the commercial break by getting launched into the apron/screen not once, but twice. It looked nasty.

Swann managed to make a bit of a comeback. This was by far the best cruiserweight match on Raw to date. Both guys pulled out everything in their arsenals. Swann executing a literal swan dive to the floor was poetic.

Aside from Michael Cole calling a modified Falcon Arrow a Michinoku Driver (which he does all the time), this was a pretty flawless match. Good story, good length of time without dragging, and exciting. If more cruiserweight matches followed that blueprint, you wouldn’t get CM Punk chants.

The finishing sequence was great. Swann’s Phoenix Splash was beautiful, and the transition into Neville’s Rings of Saturn was seamless. And even the post match interview with Austin Aries was fantastic – even if his last “question” should have been a thumb to the eye. I’m all in for Aries vs. Neville, bring it on.

Enzo & Cass Have a Death Wish Against Cesaro & Sheamus

Did I miss a subtle Enzo Amore heel turn or something? He’s just straight up acting like a jerk lately, not the lovable jerk he usually is. Although, an Ace Ventura-esque “Le-who…se-her” is always welcome.

But seriously, Cesaro is going to legit murder him, I think.

Goldberg, Now With New Championship Belt Accessory!

I would just like to point out that as of the start of this segment, I had taken more bumps in a wrestling ring than the current WWE Universal Champion has in the past 13 years. And my total is one.

But I digress. I had long resigned myself to seeing Goldberg entering WrestleMania as the Universal Champion. So, as angry as I was last night for Kevin Owens, I wasn’t surprised. It is what it is, you know?

Still, seeing Goldberg with the giant Fruit by the Foot Title around his waist and on his shoulder is a big ol’ ick to me. So when Goldberg was interrupted by Paul Heyman, you knew Brock Lesnar wasn’t far behind.

But hey, by the time the segment was over, Goldberg had fallen victim to an F5! I guess now that we’re less than a month away from WrestleMania, it was finally time to show that he actually could take a bump.

If the point of this was to show that both guys are equally able to win a match quick by hitting their big moves, we already knew that. If the point was to show that both guys were vulnerable to the other guy’s big moves, we kind of knew that, too. What I took away from this is that Goldberg has a profuse sweating issue, and an inability to let go of the belt. Probably not the goal in everyone’s minds.

Look, the match was big enough before the championship was a part of it. Adding a major prize just makes it seem like overkill. There’s still time before Mania, but it’s going to take a bit to sway most of the hardcore fans. Of course, this match is for the casual fans, who are probably eating it up – when they’re watching.

Raw Tag Team Championship Match

The Club (Luke Gallows & Karl Anderson) (c) vs. Enzo Amore & Big Cass

Result: The Club defeated Enzo Amore & Big Cass via disqualification

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

Corey Graves is doing the Lord’s work on the commentary team. I sang his praises all the time when I was handling the NXT reviews here on Daily DDT, but haven’t said too much about his work on Raw. That doesn’t mean he’s not killing it. The Cubs/White Sox stuff before this match was pure gold.

Before this match really gets going, Cesaro and Sheamus head down to the ringside area. As I mentioned a few weeks back, there’s no reason for any superstar on Raw to head to ringside when the commentary booth is on the stage. At least on SmackDown Live! you can at least use the “guest commentary” pretext to head to the ring. Here, you just look like your whole intentions are to cause trouble.

Seriously, absolutely no one comes out of this segment looking good. Gallows and Anderson are more like Dark Helmet than Darth Vader – ineffectual despite being “the best.” Enzo almost killed himself on the suicide dive before spilling Cesaro’s coffee. And what the hell is Cesaro driking coffee for at ringside? He’s Swiss, shouldn’t he be drinking hot cocoa?

The closest thing to looking good is Big Cass – who was an effective hot tag before the debacle of an ending – and Sheamus – who hit a William Tell-like Brogue Kick to the Enzo’s apple of a head on Cesaro’s shoulder. That was cool, at least. But the rest of this was trash – including the backstage fight afterwards.

Ravishing Rick Rude Entering Hall of Fame

This one falls into the long overdue category. Rude now has both the greatest entrance music and airbrush work on his tights in the Hall of Fame.

Akira Tozawa vs. Ariya Daivari

Result: Akira Tozawa defeated Ariya Daivari via pinfall

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

Man, the first hour or Raw was so promising this week. Then came the second hour and all the momentum came to a screeching halt.

It’s not that this match was bad, per se. But whether right or wrong, when it’s compared to the earlier cruiserweight segment it pales in comparison. Why wouldn’t you reverse the order of the 205 Live segments so the title match came later? You could have kept Aries on commentary for this match, and given him the opportunity to poke fun at Kendrick’s ridiculous analogy.

This match also suffers from the same old 205 Live/Raw issue – not nearly enough time to get going. Neville and Swann got basically three segments – Tozawa and Daivari get half of one, it seems. It’s very difficult to tell a decent story and make two guys look halfway decent in less than five minutes.

But Tozawa continues to work his butt off trying to get the crowd involved in his matches, and that’s a positive. His snap German suplex is incredible, too. And his mic work is a lot better than I was expecting. So there are some positives here.

There’s even a plug for tomorrow’s 205 Live, so stories are spanning multiple days. That’s impressive!

The New Day (Kofi Kingston & Big E) vs. The Shining Stars (Primo & Epico)

Result: The New Day defeated The Shining Stars via pinfall

Rating: 2.0 out of 5 stars

When the pre-match promo about a food product is longer than the match itself, we’ve entered a bizarro world. But such is the state of the New Day after dropping the tag titles.

The New Day Pop Cycle debuted last night at Fastlane, and sure, it’s funny, but to what end? Is everyone in attendance at WrestleMania going to have the opportunity to purchase a New Day Pop? And there’s NO WAY that the Pop Cycle can hold enough ice cream for 60,000 or so people.

But with the New Day relegated to hosting WrestleMania instead of competing, there’s only so much they can do between now and then. So we get the continuing culinary adventures, and a couple of matches against the non-important tag teams on Raw. Now that Rusev and Jinder Mahal have broken up, that means this week it’s the Shining Stars.

The match is a nothing kind of affair, only notable for Big E adding some grinding to his pin attempts. Looking forward to four weeks of this, and then four hours of it at WrestleMania.

Women’s History Month

I’m wondering if these Women’s History Month are going to be all about women wrestlers, or if someone will basically give an oral report about like Amelia Earhart or something.

Bayley’s Road to WrestleMania

Oh, boy. Here we go again. I’m not happy about writing this, believe me. But here’s another edition of “Raw Women’s Division Theater.”

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This week, Mick Foley is talking to Bayley. She seems upset, and he tries to console her. She goes on a tangent about how she watched her friends at WrestleMania last year, and she promised to get there, but it doesn’t feel right. (Probably because you cheated, and probably because your character has been assassinated since arriving on Raw. But I digress.)

Then Foley asks who Bayley is going to face at WrestleMania this year. First off, since when is that how it works? Literally every other championship at least has someone requesting a match, if not people challenging to get the opportunity. But no, Mick is all, “So who do you want to fight? Go ahead and pick!”

This brings Sasha out to ask for a match in the name of friendship. Foley is set to agree until Charlotte Flair and Dana Brooke come to the ring. Charlotte plays the victim – which is absolutely true in context. Her conspiracy theory going back to Roadblock is a little much, but she’s still right. Meanwhile, Dana Brooke is doing some world class mime work off to the side.

And what Raw Women’s Division Theater would be complete with Stephanie McMahon, The Most Important Woman In WWE History? She emasculates Mick once again, making Charlotte vs. Bayley at WrestleMania. Mick tries to stand up to her, but haha nope. He proposes a “play-in” match, for all intents and purposes, but is rebuffed. And Stephanie makes it so that Sasha Banks might get in to make it a triple threat match. All she has to do is defeat Bayley right now.

To recap: Somehow Charlotte is the most sympathetic character in this whole thing, Bayley is sad, and Sasha has to beat her friend to get on the WrestleMania card. Mick Foley has no power, and Stephanie McMahon is the only person who matters. And Dana Brooke can point at the WrestleMania sign.

Sasha Banks vs. Bayley

Result: Sasha Banks defeated Bayley via submission

Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars

One of the good things about face vs. face matches is they quite often exist between competitors who are friends with one another. Sasha and Bayley are good friends – sisters, according to each other – so they are very familiar with each other’s style. This leads to a lot of reversal based offense, because both wrestlers know what to expect from the other.

Coming back from the commercial break, there was an extended sequence of pinfall attempts. Lots of highly technical sequences during the entire match.

Of course, with a potential spot at WrestleMania on the line for Banks, the intensity was sure to pick up. It got a lot more physical in the second half – more strikes and power-based moves.

But since it’s the Raw Women’s Division, clean finishes are a foreign concept. It’s stunning that for so much good to great in-ring work, that the promos and match finishes are such hot garbage. Charlotte and Dana Brooke leave the commentary booth to come down to ringside and interject themselves into the match. Sasha is able to lock in the Banks Statement, and Dana distracts the referee. Charlotte – not wanting a triple threat match – tries to assist Bayley. It backfires, and Sasha is able to roll into the middle of the ring and re-lock in the hold. Bayley is forced to tap out, and we get the submission variant of “[INSERT NAME] has pinned the Women’s Champion!”

Then, Charlotte ends the segment by laying out both women and posing with the championship. If we roll this match into the promo segment before, now there’s no one who looks sympathetic. 

If the finishes of these matches were clean, they would be the greatest parts of the show. It’s getting increasingly frustrating that the entire division is devolving into distraction finishes or “cheat to win” all the time.

Seth Rollins In Rehab

Well, Seth’s rehab workout is more intense than my everyday gym routine. That’s, uh, good for him. Makes me rethink what I’m doing, though.

In all seriousness, I love the subtle shots of the Triple H poster on the wall behind Rollins. It’s like he’s got The Game looking over his shoulder, constantly driving him to push himself further to stay one step ahead.

Roman Reigns Tapes ‘Em Up

You would think that a guy who’s a star like Reigns would have a locker room, right? Why is he just lurking in the backstage area without all of his gear on and ready? Did someone have some bad food in catering and blow up the bathroom or something?

Anyway, Braun Strowman is looking for Roman. Maybe he’ll find him!

Triple H Live Via Satellite

Kudos to Triple H for keeping this feud going while his presumed opponent is literally on one leg. No one knows if anything can or will happen at WrestleMania, but here’s Hunter working his promo magic to hype it anyway. And I don’t know about you, but I’m actually looking forward to it.

It’s a great tactic Hunter takes, too. Putting over the medical staff? Genius. Not only does he get to pat himself on the back as an executive for being so “worker friendly” (but he’s still a heel until there’s a union, for what it’s worth), but he can put Rollins down as stupid for not listening to them. It’s perfect.

The (Un)Makeover of Emma

In the words of Corey Graves, “Not this again…”

Samoa Joe vs. Chris Jericho

Result: Samoa Joe defeats Chris Jericho via count out

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

Let’s take a look at what the story is here: Joe is “The Destroyer,” doing Triple H’s bidding when necessary, and when not he’s just hurting people. Earlier in the night, he came out to help Kevin Owens in his brawl with Jericho. Why? Probably because Owens is loosely affiliated with Triple H, as well.

Meanwhile, Jericho is still feeling the effects of the beatdown from the Festival of Friendship. He’s clearly not at full strength, so he’s not really any kind of a match for Joe. And Jericho never really gets anything going because of it.

Eventually, Joe decides to stop playing and just end things. He locks in the Coquina Clutch on the floor, making Y2J pass out at around the 7 count. Joe lets go, rolls back into the ring to avoid getting counted out, and waits for Jericho to lose by count out.

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Because Joe is The Destroyer, he’s not content with a win. He brings Jericho in for more of a beatdown, but is hit with a surprise Codebreaker before retreating.

I have a few problems with all of that. First, the count out victory – why not just get Jericho to pass out in the ring, and win by submission/TKO? The count out is the lamest possible finish I can think of.

Second, the surprise Codebreaker. Last night, we saw Joe make Sami Zayn pass out in the Coquina Clutch. Joe was practically in the shower by the time Sami started getting up and moving. Tonight, Jericho is fine like 30 seconds later to hit his signature? And then looking no worse for wear? A few weeks after being beaten into a hospital? It’s so inconsistent. Not to mention it makes Sami look like the scrawniest wimp on the roster. It’s like when the apron powerbomb killed him for months, and Seth Rollins was fine the next week.

Source: WWE.com

Strowman Wants Roman, But Gets The Deadman

You could practically feel the excitement drain from the Allstate Arena when they realized that Undertaker vs. Strowman wasn’t happening. Anyone who watched the Royal Rumble should have known what was coming, but a swerve would have been welcome for much of the crowd. Sorry, that’s what you get for CM Punk-ing all night.

Anyway, Braun Strowman was angry. And he should have been – he busted out a ton of never-seen-from-him-before offense at Fastlane, and still came up short against Roman Reigns. So he calls Reigns out to finish the job on his terms.

Instead, he got the Undertaker. I’ll admit, I was hoping that maybe this was setting up Strowman vs. Undertaker for Mania – but my brain shut it down pretty quick. “What would Roman do?” was all I could think of, and that’s why I dropped the idea quick.

Still, seeing the two giants stare each other down was impressive. If Taker can hold up a bit longer, I wouldn’t mind seeing him take on Braun at some point. And seeing Strowman recoil in fear and just leave? Wow.

Once Strowman is gone, then Reigns conveniently shows up. He makes the biggest mistake of his life – disrespecting Undertaker. Yeah, he said, “With all due respect,” but everyone knows that whatever follows that phrase is always disrespectful.

Taker don’t play that, though, and after a glance to the WrestleMania sign, chokeslams Reigns before leaving. Credit to Roman, he sold it like a champ, and now another WrestleMania match is all but official.

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What did you think of this week’s episode of Raw?