Kevin Nash criticized the opening segment of this week’s Monday Night Raw on the Kliq This podcast, questioning what was accomplished by the Seth Rollins masked men attack and saying the show’s flagship opening felt flat.
Nash said the show opened with Adam Pearce calling Rollins out over not being medically cleared, which Nash found inherently contradictory for professional wrestling. “In pro wrestling alone, this is like an oxymoron,” Nash said. “I’m pretty sure I tore my quad when I wasn’t medically cleared for my bicep. It’s not really out of the realm of s**t we do.”
The segment escalated when masked men swarmed the ring, which Nash compared to 1960s Batman. “It was The Thomas Crown Affair,” Nash said. “They did a line dance or something.”
Co-host Sean Oliver described it as “a lemur’s mating dance” before settling on “jazz improv with some choreography.” Nash agreed with the comparison to the henchmen from the 1966 Batman series. “I felt a ’66 vibe when all the hooded guys were out there,” he said. “It was always those that crew of guys that had the bowlers on or something. These are perfect, the all black hooded guys.”
Nash said once Rollins revealed himself and LA Knight made the save, too many moving pieces were involved without advancing any storyline. “Wow, that’s a lot of moving pieces in that first segment. What exactly was accomplished with Seth?” Nash said.
He then addressed a broader issue with modern wrestling storytelling. “Because of our age and because of the way we view pro wrestling, we are expecting a storyline to be moved forward. That’s not what they do anymore,” Nash said. Oliver pushed back, noting that WWE calls itself “the longest running episodic television,” which should carry an expectation of episodic storytelling. Nash conceded the point but said the current audience is different.
Nash did note that LA Knight appeared to be in better shape and looked like someone had gotten in his ear about being used more prominently. “You can tell that LA Knight is like, someone’s gotten his ear. ‘Hey, we’re going to start to use you,’ because he looked like he was in better shape,” Nash said. “He was definitely on his game.”
Nash also praised the main event segment where the Usos confronted CM Punk. “The Usos did the right thing. They went down and he wouldn’t apologize, and they dropped him,” Nash said. “That was because they’re babyfaces and they kept on babyface. That’s when you abide by the rules. It took that much to get him to hit him. He was really that upset.”
Nash said the arena in Seattle was noticeably quiet by the end of the night. “The arena wasn’t exactly cracking at the end of the night,” he said. “Seattle’s always been kind of a hard place to work.”
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