“Time, time, time, see what’s become of me,” sung Simon or Garfunkel (or both). That’s a lyric that particularly resonates with this weeks’ Monday Night Raw, in which a bunch of legends, ravaged by time, stood around staring at each other, trying to cling on to their lost youth…
I’m Elliot and I watch Raw so you don’t have to.

This week, Sami Zayn had to earn his place in the Royal Rumble match, despite nobody else on the roster having to do that. If we see R-Truth run down to the ring on Sunday without “qualifying”, I implore you all to tweet “Illogical!” at WWE.
The task was simple, if not completely arbitrary – beat Seth Rollins and take his place, grow your hair long and dye half of it blond, be an unnatural baby face, post a picture of your dick on the Internet – all pretty cut and dry.
Schtick aside, this bout definitely earned the “Match of the Night” title, and in fact, both participants got to take home the game ball. Sami Zayn won with a surprise small package after Triple H’s music played, distracting “The Architect”.

FACT! THESE THINGS HAPPENED. PERIOD:
– Luke Gallows pinned Cesaro after some distractions and an unseen tap out from the former.
– There will be 2 referees in the tag championship match at the Royal Rumble. Cesaro and Sheamus have both already been announced for the the rumble itself, which is mildly interesting.
– Mustafa Ali pinned Drew Gulak in a 6-man “we don’t know what to do with this division” tag match.
– Rusev got to “officially enter the rumble match” without any qualifying nonsense.
– New Day & Enzo and Cass lost to Rusev, Jinder Mahal, Titus O’Neil and Braun Strowman after the latter running powerslammed Amore.
– The Big Show hobbled out for a staredown with Strowman, who retreated.
– The Universal title match on Sunday will be No DQ.
– Nia Jax beat a jobber, then got wrecked by Sasha Banks and her crutch.
– Rich Swann defeated Noam Dar (who was accompanied by Alicia Fox, which surprised me, although I’ve missed the past few episodes of 205 Live and don’t care at all).
– Neville and Rich Swann had a scuffle.
– Cedric Alexander will take on Neville on this week’s 205 Live.
– Goldberg was old, sweaty and, for some reason, bleeding during a promo (interestingly, the blood is photoshopped out in the promo photos on WWE.com). Heyman and Lesnar turned up to shout and do a little signature dance, respectively.
– The Undertaker flashed into existence between Goldberg and Lesnar to unleash hell (stare at them both and do nothing else).

The show actually began as most Raws do – with an unwelcome promo from Roman Reigns. His meandering promotion of Sunday’s Universal Title match was interrupted by Chris Jericho & Kevin Owens and while I am a big fan of Y2KO, even I am pretty done with this feud. The jokes are growing old and the inevitable image of Roman standing tall with every title in the company draped elegantly from his body fills me with dread.
Jericho was goaded into giving Reigns a US Title rematch, which uncomfortably sat in the middle of the show – almost like nothing of importance was ever going to happen…
This match was “whatever” – like, who gives a fuck anymore? One blatant flaw in logic perhaps tainted my perception, but hear me out: Chris Jericho, the greatest of all time, didn’t want to put his title on the line against Roman Reigns, the new people’s champion (alternative fact), so why did he dick around with a match for more than 10 seconds? Like, why not literally take 10 seconds, roll under the ropes and take a count out defeat, in turn retaining his title? It would have been fair to assume that Reigns’ pursuit of the Universal Championship would have taken priority over any more US title rematches, so why not take a gamble? I guess if I spend this long questioning the logic in wrestling, should I not also question why I watch wrestling at all?
Anyway, Reigns looked like he was going to win, so Kevin Owens got involved, letting Jericho retain by way of a DQ loss. In other obvious news, following the match, Roman bested the two champions and stood tall, after Owens took a ride in the shark cage (hey, maybe you guys shouldn’t have introduced that stipulation so many weeks ago, because it’s already boring).

Anyway, the Royal Rumble is on Sunday and it might be good. Maybe. BYE!