Worst Raw Ever: A Weekly Look at Everything Wrong in WWE

To begin the new year, this is my first installment of "Worst Raw Ever." This weekly column will feature my perspective on all of the terrible things that happened on Raw this week and how the company continues to shoot itself in the foot.

This is not a fantasy booking column, though; I will occasionally share my perspective on how things could have been improved. At the moment, WWE may be at its lowest point in two decades. Not since the doldrums of the Diesel era have I seen such a complete disaster for a WWE product.

Aside from a few highlights, 2014 was pretty miserable. Let's see if 2015 can be worse.

John Cena Appreciation Night

Haven't we been celebrating John Cena for 10 years now? I know that the idea was to be tongue-in-cheek with The Authority sarcastically "appreciating" Cena, but then we actually had a series of highlight-reel memories of Cena's career. Why?

If we were mocking Cena, why are we reshowing his debut, his handshake with the Undertaker, his win against JBL at WrestleMania, and later, his being drafted onto Raw? If we are mocking Cena, shouldn't we be showing the lowlights?

We should show him losing to The Rock, then his getting fired as part of the Nexus angle and then his decimation by Brock Lesnar at SummerSlam this year. 

The reason for the poorly executed angle was to try to build sympathy for Cena and make him look vulnerable. But instead, we got classic Cena hype videos, followed by sad panda Cena standing in the middle of the ring looking helpless.

There is a difference between vulnerable and helpless. Vulnerable means that someone may have an advantage over him, but he can be angry and fight back against the power. Instead, Cena looked like someone put him in timeout after kicking his dog. 

Where was Daniel Bryan?

One of the biggest stories going into the new year is the return of Daniel Bryan—or at least it should be. 

Bryan is the uncrowned champion who never lost his title. He was the leader of the Yes Movement. He was the inspirational hero of the masses who fought the power, toppled The Authority and closed WrestleMania leading 70,000 people chanting his catchphrase.

People wondered how Bryan can follow up on that. He was the underdog who climbed the mountain, put down his flag and then what? Bryan's injury and absence throughout the rest of the year wasn't the best-case scenario, but it doesn't hand the WWE a gift-wrapped underdog story that could energize the entire show.

Daniel Bryan, the rightful WWE champion, returns to competition from a career-threatening injury to regain his place as the leader of the WWE Universe.

You can build an entire company around that single story from now until SummerSlam with Bryan getting eliminated from the Rumble, being shut out of the WrestleMania main event and working his way back up the card until finally capturing the belt again. 

Instead, Bryan returned last week but wasn't in the main event segment as part of a poorly promoted part of the show. Then, it's completely ignored this week on Raw. There wasn't a replay package, and it wasn't discussed on commentary or even acknowledged by The Authority, whom he raged against for an entire year. 

It's amazing how Vince McMahon is so determined to make us love John Cena that he'll completely ignore the fact that TVs would turn to his program across the country were they to promote Bryan being on Raw. 

The Ascension were doomed from the start

To start, it should be noted that I'm not a big fan of The Ascension. I thought they were an average tag team in NXT that benefited from a niche audience of die-hard fans and very careful booking to accentuate their positives while hiding their many shortcomings.

But you know, that's how wrestling works. That's how it has worked for generations. You pick a guy (or guys in this situation) and you figure out the best way to present them and go out of your way to make it as good as possible.

Instead, you get what the WWE has done. It's taken a team that may not be completely original but were unique to the WWE tag division and ruined it. Rather than just letting them be The Ascension, a vaguely Gothic, possibly Satanic, at least generally Underworld-inspired tag team, they are Road Warrior wannabes.

Paint their faces with red and black, but don't make them individually unique or awesome like Hawk and Animal. Give them shoulder pads for ring gear but not vicious, terrifying ones with spikes that look intimidating. Then have them literally mention the Legion of Doom and Demolition by name in case anyone wasn't sure that they were ripping off two legendary tag teams from 30 years ago. 

Finally, instead of putting them over on commentary as the heir apparent to these historic teams, JBL and Booker immediately bury them. They say that The Ascension couldn't hold a candle to those teams and shouldn't claim to be like them. 

Why not go with it? We know that Vince is feeding the commentators their lines. Vince is the one who thinks having The Ascension claim a place in that company will make fans care, so why doesn't he also want them put it over on commentary?

If only JBL had said something along the lines of, "Wow, those are two incredible teams, the Road Warriors and Demolition. We've only seen a little bit from The Ascension so far, but if they are half of what those two Hall of Fame tag teams were, the WWE should be on the lookout."

Why not put over your new tag team? Because, shut up. You don't know how wrestling works, Mark. 

Dean Ambrose and Bray Wyatt in another gimmick match

Once again, two of our favorite psychopaths collided in an over-the-top weapons gimmick match that is usually reserved for ending a feud. This week, we think it might finally be over. Maybe.

But Vince could change his mind on Monday at 4 p.m. when he's rewriting Raw by putting the two of them in an inferno match to start the 9 p.m. hour and calling it episodic television. 

Wyatt won the match and is being kept strong just in case The Undertaker decides he wants to return for WrestleMania and Wyatt gets the call to lose to The Deadman. Then, there is the chance that The Undertaker doesn't come back and Ambrose and Wyatt are relegated to a Battle Royal on the biggest show of the year.

There was a time when I was thrilled by the idea of an Ambrose-Wyatt feud. These are two guys who should be leading the change in the WWE as main eventers for the next five years. The matches have been solid but very much redundant, as you can only have Ambrose drop elbows off of so many different things before the fans are desensitized.

Then there is the fact that every week they compete in matches that are supposed to end careers and shorten lives, yet they both bounce back without a scratch or sign of wear.

Ambrose will probably show up on Smackdown Friday and pretend he didn't just participate in an Ambulance match against a sworn foe and lose. 

Ambrose was the most red-hot babyface on the roster this summer, and in true WWE form, they found a way to kill his momentum and reduce him to an also-ran part of the directionless midcard.

Barrett, Cesaro, Kidd etc.

So Cesaro recently comes out with a shirt on that says "Professional," which appears to signify a direction for his character. It's a whiny malcontent character, but it's something other than being just a guy. Bad News Barrett returns as a babyface to shut up Cesaro, and he does.

This week, Barrett is suddenly a heel. Cesaro is teaming with Tyson Kidd. And this new partnership has a problem with The New Day. And they are friends with Adam Rose to the extent that he'd allow them to hide as part of The Rosebuds for a sneak attack.

That's just stating facts without even pointing out all that is wrong with what just happened. Perhaps the most infuriating part is that Renee Young conducted an interview with Cesaro and Kidd backstage that was posted on YouTube and WWE.com that was some of the best character development for these two in more than a year.

Raw is now three hours long. They have more time on air than ever before, and we can't find time to slip a 20-second promo in with the two guys who are now suddenly friends and attacking babyface trios. Maybe we could've been spared a Cena Appreciation Night highlight and found some time for these two. 

The Wyatt Family explodes and nobody cares

Bray Wyatt "released" Harper and Rowan. We don't what that means, but it seems that instead of three backwoods brutes traveling together and being confined to the same segments, they show up at different parts of the show without clearly defined motivations, drifting aimlessly. 

It should've been a big deal when Harper and Rowan faced off. They were brothers, after all. We know that Harper "is a team player" and Rowan "doesn't like bullies." That was the extent of the character development both received in the last two months, and it doesn't give fans much of a reason to care about them, either.

That's probably why the crowd was completely dead during their match on Raw. They were also probably confused as to why J&J Security are helping Harper. I guess it's because he was on Team Authority at Survivor Series? But he hasn't been shown with them since they returned last week.