Monday Night Raw TV report for 04/16/2018

Oi! 😀 I bet you didn’t see this one coming. It’s @TheMagnumDA and I am BACK for the Raw Report. But that’s not all…starting tomorrow, I’ll also be doing the Smackdown Live TV reports, as well. These won’t be your typical move-by-move TV reports, like before…we’re going to try a new format.

We’re going to give you a summary, which includes:

The Results: Who won the match?

• Jeff Hardy defeated Jinder Mahal to win the United States Championship. This was Mahal’s return to Raw via the Superstar Shake-up. **

• Sasha Banks vs. Bayley – No contest, match ended when the Riott Squad interfered. This was The Riott Squad’s debut on Raw via the Superstar Shake-up. *1/2

• Authors of Pain defeated Heath Slater & Rhyno in a rematch from AOP’s debut last week. *

• Matt Hardy & Bray Wyatt defeated The Revival to win the Tag Team Eliminator. They will face The Bar at the Greatest Royal Rumble event in Saudi Arabia for the vacant Raw Tag Team Championship. **

• Ember Moon defeated Mickie James with the Eclipse. *3/4

• Natalya defeated Mandy Rose with the Sharpshooter. After the match, Ronda Rousey took out Sonya Deville. *1/2

• Braun Strowman, Seth Rollins, Finn Balor, Bobby Lashley, and Bobby Roode defeated The Miz, Bo Dallas, Curtis Axel, Sami Zayn, and Kevin Owens in a 10-man tag match when Braun Strowman hit the Running Powerslam on Miz. **1/4

The Superstars involved in the “Superstar Shake-up”

Moving from Smackdown Live from Raw: Baron Corbin, Bobby Roode, Breezango, Chad Gable, Dolph Ziggler, Jinder Mahal, Kevin Owens, Mike Kanellis, Mojo Rawley, Natalya, Sami Zayn, The Ascension, The Riott Squad (Ruby Riott, Liv Morgan, Sarah Logan), and Zack Ryder. Drew McIntyre also made his return to Raw from NXT.

The Good: The best parts of Raw.

• Big Time Shake-up: I can appreciate that 18 people are switching from Smackdown to Raw. I’m sure that means there’s going to be a lot of Raw guys coming to Smackdown. This is a good thing, but one thing I noticed about the Raw pickups…there’s a LOT of heels here. Even the guys who are babyfaces, like Bobby Roode, aren’t getting HUGE good guy reactions, so eventually he’s going to turn evil too.

• Old Names, New Team: I really dig the Dolph Ziggler & Drew McIntyre pairing. They looked good destroying Titus Worldwide, and the crowd really reacted to their tag team finisher.

• Ronda: I loved Ronda Rousey this week. From her angry march to the ring, to that SICK takedown on Sonya Deville, Ronda seems like a natural to pro wrestling. Yeah, the punches didn’t 100% connect on Deville, but who cares? She looked like a badass, plain and simple.

The Bad: Self-explained…basically, what sucked?

• Kurt.Angle@NoFreakingWay.com – Dude, 1999 called. They want their .com joke back. I love Kurt, but he should be careful…this was almost ugly.

• Wait, what happened at WrestleMania? With Jinder Mahal losing the US Championship in his return to Raw, this means he’ll probably get a push and a chance at the WWE Universal Championship. Or he’ll return to 3MB. Either way, this is now the third Championship that has changed hands since WrestleMania. Thanks to this booking, people are quickly going to forget the US Title Fatal 4 Way from that show, as well as the Raw tag team championship match and the Smackdown women’s title match.

• Scary lack of support for Lashley and Roode: During the 10-man tag, I could feel the crowd get behind Seth Rollins, Braun Strowman, and Finn Balor. I could hear a pin drop when Lashley and Roode got in the ring. I know Vince is paying attention to that. I think a turn should be in order for these two: It will take them to the next level.

The Ugly (or worse…the Fugly and the dreaded PUG FUGLY): If I could sum these three categories up, I would say…try to avoid these. To quote the great author RD Reynolds, this would be considered WrestleCrap worthy.

• Nothing too awful this week! That’s a good thing. 🙂

Alright, we’ll see you tomorrow for the Smackdown Live portion of the Superstar Shake-up! @TheMagnumDA, signing off.