Tiffany’s WWE Raw Takes: Garden Homecoming (9/9/19)

WWE returns to Madison Square Garden for a monumental edition of Raw that included the return of “Stone Cold” Steve Austin and more! Find out what Tiffany thought in this edition of Tiffany’s Raw Takes!

We are in the homestretch for Clash of Champions and WWE is BACK in Madison Square Garden for TV for the first time in a decade! Will the homecoming be all it could be or is it true you can’t go home again?

King of the Ring

So last week, WWE threw a HUGE monkey-wrench into RAW’s King of the Ring quarterfinals with a screw finish to the Samoa Joe/Ricochet match, which lead us to this week’s Triple Threat Match with the winner advancing to the finals.

The match was really good! Samoa Joe and Ricochet just picked up where they left off last week. I’m pissed Ricochet got robbed. He’s way more needing of a push than the winner was. Hopefully, someone worthwhile will win on SmackDown or this King of the Ring tournament will be a colossal waste of everyone’s time.

Women’s Division

I’m going to be upfront. I’m very disappointed that there was almost no build for the epic Four Horsewomen clash and that it went on in the second hour of RAW. This feud has been a long time coming and it feels like the fans are getting cheated with a quick feud before SmackDown goes to Fox and the brands are set in stone.

Not surprisingly, things got out of hand in a hurry with the four best women in the Women’s Division in the same breathing space. The match was SO good, despite my complaining. It doesn’t quite do away with my disappointment with how things were booked at the start, but it was a great match and Team Generation Tea was standing. We’ll see what happens on Tuesday and Sunday.

Lacey Evans and Nattie clashed…again. Lacey Evans was awkward to watch…again. Why is she on RAW and not Dana Brooke and Sarah Logan, who have been having a banging feud on Main Event? At least Nattie won this round, but I’d much rather Evans go back to Main Event and stay there and get Dana Brooke vs Sarah Logan in exchange.

Seth Rollins and Braun Strowman vs The OC

Let’s try that again! Seth Rollins and Braun Strowman took another stab at signing the contract for their match at Clash of the Champions, only instead of Michael Cole, the legendary Stone Cold Steve Austin returned to RAW to play sheriff. I’m ot a huge fan of legends coming back and taking the spotlight from the current locker room, but Austin did it right. He kept the trip down memory lane brief.

At least the contract got signed before the OC showed up to stir the pot. I wish Austin was able to wrestle because a tag match between the OC and Rollins, Strowman, and Austin would’ve been amazing. HOWEVER, we got the original Stone. Cold. STUNNER in Madison Square Garden to start the night off right. And that’s the bottom line cuz… I said so!

AJ Styles’ problems weren’t over after getting the Stone Cold Stunner because he had to deal with Cedric Alexander. That was a really great match. It’s always precarious when similar styles are in a match, but Styles and Alexander did really good, especially with Styles selling the Stunner hangover. Alexander got the DQ win due to the OC interfering, but Viking Raiders went a Viking and the whole picture looks much more interesting.

After Whining Gloriously seemed to strike a deal with the OC, we got a ten man tag team match to main event RAW. It was a good main event, but I would’ve rather seen the women’s tag match as the main event than an unwieldy multi-man match. Don’t get me wrong, the match was good, but huge multi-man matches are always unwieldy, no matter who is in them. Cedric Alexander go tthe pinfall on AJ Styles, much to his delight and we had a big beer bash in Madison Square Garden to send people home happy. Welcome home, WWE!