In a world in which we strive for strong and stable, marvel, dear reader, at my ability to recap Monday Night Raw with a severely broken Internet connection. Admittedly, even when it’s fixed I’ll describe it as “surgically repaired” to achieve some cheap sympathy. Anyway, I’m Elliot and I watch Raw so you don’t have to, even when doing so drives me into a TalkTalk-cidal rage.

Raw began with Paul Heyman, accompanied by his advocate, Brock Lesnar, doing an angry shout about Samoa Joe. Obviously, chaos ensued. All the jobbers ran out to break the pair up/get some screen time. “Now that’s how you hype a match, boys,” exclaimed the creative team’s Penguin Compendium of Wrestling Booking.

What’s good about Elias Samson’s gimmick is that he’s not that great at the guitar and even less not-that-great at singing. It also helped his heat in NXT that even Corey Graves, the heel commentator (admittedly an Internet darling), hated him. On the main roster, Graves begrudgingly respects his in ring ability. Not the same!

This week he sang a song void of metaphor or creativity, almost as if the segment was cobbled together at 5-minute’s notice. The Drifter sang about Ambrose and was obviously interrupted, but by whom!?

So Samson defeated Dean Ambrose with a swinging neckbreaker after The Miz was made to look like a chump.

Later in the show, Slater and Rhyno defeated The Miz and a bear in a match that was logically flawed. Like, the bear was revealed to be some guy, though a few minutes later, a remasked bear delivered a Dirty Deeds to Slater, revealed itself to now be Glenn Jacobs (or possibly Dean Ambrose – my memory is hazy), before Deedsing The Miz. So basically, the first bear guy was legally in the match and as soon as Dean Ambrose unmasked himself after wiping out Slater, the ref should have called off the match. JUST SAYING! Also, the seeds of an on-screen breakup of Miz and Maryse have been firmly planted and they’re making me somewhat nervous.

HERE’S ALL THAT TERRIBLE OTHER SHIT FOR YA:

– Noam Dar borrowed Tyler Breeze’s tron for a facetime with Alicia Fox who got to see the young Scot job to Cedric Alexander in record time via like video linkBray Wyatt is embarking on an ill-fated feud with Seth Rollins and the creative team is doubling down on

– Bray Wyatt is embarking on an ill-fated feud with Seth Rollins and the creative team is doubling down on a spooky magic thing.

– John Cena is now, for some reason, a free agent (the reason is falling ratings of both brands).

– Apollo Crews beat Kalisto and Titus O’Neil forced Akira Tozawa to celebrate with the brand. Cool to see the Cruiserweights interact with the main roster.

– They did that thing where all the women’s division turned up to demand a title shot and I think Mickie James was dressed as Tatanka?

– Emma returned just in time to tap out to Sasha Banks. Super cool comeback! Major momentum.

– Noam Dar, Gallows, Anderson and a cheesy bites pizza starred in a so-bad-it’s-bad advert for Pizza Hut.

– They showed a really, really, really long VT just promoting the idea of Roman Reigns. It was like what the IWC would have you believe every episode of Raw is like.

Okay, just a quick update on the worst storyline on Raw right now:

Big Cass got wrecked backstage again but had a match with the Good Brothers anyway. He was a bit loopy, allowing Gallows & Anderson to hit Enzo with the Magic Killer for the win. During the obligatory post-match beatdown, The Big Show turned up to deter the baddies from inflicting any more punishment on Enzo while Cass looked on, piss boiling.

Backstage, Enzo thanked Show, though casually accused him of taking out Big Cass two weeks in a row. Show responded by spelling a word in a familiar manner when speaking of Enzo’s partner. Also, pretty cool that Gallows & Anderson don’t even get an entrance anymore. MAJOR MOMENTUM!

The night’s main event was a 2-out-of-3 falls match for the tag team titles. Weirdly, the aforementioned Roman video forced the Hardy boyz to be “already in the ring”. This was a pretty good match, and it’s worth a watch if you’ve got a long shit to do and a good Internet connection.

Here’s what went down:

Sheamus Brogue Kicked an upside-down Jeff Hardy and scored the first fall within a couple of minutes of the match beginning. After Jeff rag dolled around the ring for a while, he eventually tagged in Matt who won the second fall with a Twist of Fate on Cesaro. Sheamus hit Matt with a feckin’ massive knee to the face that will surely be gipped for centuries to come.

There was a moment in which Cesaro had Matt in the Sharpshooter and Jeff just stood on the apron and watched?  The match ended in a double count-out because fuck the audience, right? BYE!