WWE Raw: What was the point of the Sami Zayn, Bobby Lashley segment?

Last Monday, Sami Zayn and Bobby Lashley took part in one of the worst segments in recent WWE RAW history. What was this supposed to accomplish?

I have a serious question. Who was supposed to benefit from that atrocious Bobby Lashley/Sami Zayn segment on WWE RAW this past Monday? Was it supposed to put heat on Zayn? Was it supposed to get Lashley over as a babyface? Did Vine McMahon concoct this dumpster fire of a segment to satiate his twisted sense of humor? What was the point of this?

Even if this segment was created to humor McMahon, it was ultimately a waste of everybody else’s time. The dialogue was cringeworthy, the “sisters'” (probably indie wrestlers in drag) acting was terrible and, of course, the whole thing ran far too long. And most importantly, it was incredibly offensive.

Put all of that together, and you get one of the worst RAW segments of the last couple of years. Crap like this does more harm than good, and this company has to figure this out eventually.

It served no purpose

WWE planted the seed for this segment several weeks ago when Lashley participated in a sit-down interview with Renee Young. Unlike last Monday’s trainwreck, I had high hopes for the Lashley/Young interview, since WWE–for all of its creative flaws–usually excels at executing this style. Although many people thought the interview was a bit strange, I didn’t want to judge it right away because I thought that it would be the first of several parts. Little did I know that it was simply the setup for one of the worst angles of the year.

I’m still having a hard time processing the awfulness that WWE subjected its audience to. I guess Zayn, who vowed to “expose” the former ECW Champion as a fraud, was supposed to come across as the true liar. Predictably, the “babyface” announcers, Michael Cole and Jonathan Coachman, failed to emphasize the farcical nature of the “interview”. But I’m long passed the point of expecting WWE announcers–outside of a couple of exceptions–doing their jobs properly. The segment certainly didn’t make Lashley look like an upstanding guy either, especially if fans were supposed to take what the “sisters” said at face value (they weren’t).

The bad dialogue was filled with WWE’s trademark terrible comedy, with some of the dialogue being outright infuriating. I’m sure that Vince thought that the idea of Lashley getting the cops called on him for stealing candy was gut-busting, but it simply provided another example of McMahon’s insulation from the outside world. The truth is, stories like that aren’t as farfetched as McMahon or whoever wrote that segment think.

So to review, this segment failed to get Zayn over as a heel and failed to boost Lashley’s popularity. In the end, WWE wasted everybody’s time, including their own.

Can Lashley and Zayn recover from this?

As my colleague Joe Soriano pointed out on Twitter, this wasn’t the worst segment of all time. He noted that the Bayley/Alexa Bliss “This is your Life” nonsense was far worse, as that mess torpedoed Bayley’s momentum for several months. This muck didn’t do much damage to Zayn or Lashley but it certainly didn’t help either man.

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This garbage segment will likely lead to a singles match between Zayn and Lashley, probably at Money in the Bank. The former TNA World Heavyweight Champion will probably win in convincing fashion as WWE continues to push him as a top singles act. But for a man who many thought would have a showdown match with Brock Lesnar somewhere down the road, this was an angle that could stagnate his drawing power for both the short and long term.