Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.

By Nicholas Jason Lopez

“Notes In Observance” features random thoughts and analysis on recent television shows. Quick results can be found at the bottom of the post.

(Aired 6/2/16)

Air Club

– As you’d expect, the opening video focused on one of the year’s best angles in John Cena’s Memorial Day return being spoiled by AJ Styles and The Club as they took him out in sinister and deceitful fashion.

– Cena wasn’t the only one attacked on Raw, as earlier that night, Karl Anderson/Luke Gallows attacked the WWE World Tag Team Champions The New Day and laid them out. Obviously, there’d also be some kind of follow-up. The opening in-ring segment with The New Day and The Club was decent at best. Styles was a highlight like he needed to be, as he bragged about his accomplishments and how everyone talked about them. What we weren’t so crazy about were New Day going the comedic route the whole segment when Creative has tried to portray Gallows/Anderson as genuine big guy threats. If New Day would take them seriously, it’d help them get over more. We’re not saying the comedy doesn’t work, but there’s a time and place for it. It didn’t feel like it fit the moment here. At the least, this set up the Kofi Kingston-AJ Styles main event, though we thought a six-man tag would’ve been the cooler way to go, but maybe we’ll get that in the coming weeks.

– They’ve told an alright story with the duo of WWE Women’s Champion Charlotte and Dana Brooke with the abandonment of Ric Flair, but it seems that they’ve eased up on the Ric sympathy card thankfully. Even Lawler was back to applauding Charlotte. The Charlotte-Becky Lynch match had its moments of gritty glory, but we’ve been there before. The finish was kind of eh, as Brooke pulled Charlotte out of the ring as Lynch applied the Disarmer for a DQ. It did set up Natalya to come out and cause a mini-melee as the faces were left in the ring as the heels retreated. We can only assume a tag match is in our future.

– The backstage segment with Dean Ambrose, Sami Zayn, Kevin Owens and Alberto Del Rio was an entertaining push for their tag match later on. It was all about Money In The Bank and the bickering between Zayn/Owens about their history was funny. Owens always gets in the last insult and felt the need to criticize Renee Young’s necklace. Funny.

– The Golden Truth-Breezango feud continues to spin its wheels, as we got another version of the exact same story. This time, The Dudley Boyz were the ones to beat GT while Breezango watched from the VIP section and caused the distraction that cost GT the match. Breezango’s post-match promo was pretty eh too. All we know so far are that GT can’t win, Breezango like to brag and GT continue to look for their first win. This isn’t heading anywhere fast enough for us. Don’t even get us started on the rolling Goldust head karaoke lyrics to GT’s new song.

– Just a bitter and angry man, Baron Corbin’s backstage promo from outside the arena got over that he didn’t want to give the fans his presence and let it be known that Dolph Ziggler was in trouble the next time he entered an area. There was a mention somewhere of broken bones and dreams. How poetic.

– The Ambrose/Zayn-Owens/Del Rio match was pretty good time-filler as MITB hype. Owens’ mocking of everybody was hilarious, Zayn flew around with ease and there was excellent extended build to the hot tag with Ambrose. The finish was also an easy way to keep Zayn on the upside as he got the pin and Owens got to express more anger by losing matches with assigned partners and that set up a suit-clad Cesaro to upstage him when he climbed a ladder to bring down the MITB briefcase. Our only gripe with this – where’s Chris Jericho? He’s in this match too, no?

– The build for WWE United States Champion Rusev continued on as he beat Jack Swagger in a physical victory. Swagger looked like an instant jobber out of the curtain, but we liked how as the match progressed, he got stronger. The crowd even bought into some of his offense before Rusev tore it down to its foundation. Also liked how Swagger briefly teased breaking out of the Accolade only to submit to it. Titus O’Neil running off Rusev when he refused to let the Accolade go was an easy way to progress their feud.

– Our hopes that this “Life Lessons With Coach Backlund” vignettes will pay off for Darren Young go down by the week. This week gave us the news that Backlund disapproves of running of any kind and motivated Young to walk eight hours to the next town to retrieve his car keys. Ugh. We don’t want to see this gimmick past the vignette stage.

– The Styles-Kingston main event was good for what it was. Styles and Kingston had some good chemistry in the ring to carry the match, while some outside chaos kept things interesting right down to the rapid-fire finish. Styles won with the Styles Clash, which basically needed to happen so that The Club’s momentum could be kept strong for the following week’s Raw.

Quick Results

• Becky Lynch def. Charlotte (w/Dana Brooke) via DQ
• The Dudley Boyz def. Golden Truth via pinfall
• Dean Ambrose/Sami Zayn def. Kevin Owens/Alberto Del Rio via pinfall 
• Rusev (w/Lana) def. Jack Swagger via submission 
• AJ Styles (w/Karl Anderson, Luke Gallows) def. Kofi Kingston (w/Big E, Xavier Woods) via pinfall