SPOTLIGHTED PODCAST ALERT (YOUR ARTICLE BEGINS A FEW INCHES DOWN)...
RAW TALK REPORT
AUGUST 25, 2021
AIRED ON PEACOCK (VIA WWE NETWORK)
REVIEW BY NICK MORGAN, PWTORCH CONTRIBUTOR
Hosts: Kevin Patrick and R-Truth
This week’s guests (more interviewees than guests): Charlotte, Jinder Mahal (w/Veer & Shanky), and Damian Priest
– Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Poor Kayla Braxton, who was doing such great work with Paul Heyman and Pat McAfee on the old format Talking Smack, has now been reduced to a script regurgitating WWE talking head next to Matt Camp on the Raw Talk in-studio set. I was hoping this would not happen, but leave it to WWE to take any good, great, up and coming talent, wrestler or otherwise and turn them into WWE milk toast mediocre pablum.
– I think you see where I am coming from and I apologize for my harping on this, but this new format isn’t fun if you the viewer are looking for additional content, spice, condiments, or whatever. This show is now purely a recap show for those who don’t want to waste three hours actually watching Raw as it airs.
– After doing a verbal recap of most of the first hour and a half of Raw, they showed the Charlotte in ring promo (not one of Charlotte’s best and pretty much a throw back to where she was a year or so ago with her stilted speech pattern and senseless WWE rantings.) They followed this up with Alexa’s brief appearance. Kayla and Matt continued to ramble on before throwing to Sarah Schreiber for a backstage “interview” with Charlotte, who asked why Sarah didn’t roll out the red carpet for the “Queen” and when asked complimented, Alexa but said she was just cute and no match for Charlotte.
– Back in studio they threw to a break with an add for the WWE Shop.com. They continued to recap the show, trying their best to make Karrion Kross’ ridiculous get up a good thing (it wasn’t). They spent about two minutes trying to rehab Kross before moving to the Jinder vs. Mansoor match, which led to another backstage interview, this time with Jinder. One question, who cares!
– Kevin Patrick had the duty to interview Jindal (w/Shanky & Veer) and rather than featuring any kind of real questions, the segment just allowed Jindal to spout about how great he was before turning it over to Veer and Shanky to make threats to Drew McIntyre. Jinder then abruptly ended the interview and we are sent back to the studio.
– After a tease of a segment with Damian Priest, we get a promo for the Extreme Rules PPV.
– Coming out of the break we get a video recap of the RK-Bro celebration as they continue to run down the show. After the video some more talk and recapping from Kayla and Matt before they throw backstage to the Priest interview segment. Kevin Patrick asked Priest why he challenged Bobby Lashley. His reason was “I just wanted to shut him up.” Patrick then asked about Summerslam and Priest gave a rather boring, stale answer and when Patrick asked if he could join Priest and McIntyre at the pub, Priest blew him off. We were then tossed back in studio for the sign-off.
FINAL THOUGHTS: At 21 minutes this week, Raw Talk is a slog if you are looking for anything new or fun. If you missed Raw, then, yes, go ahead and watch to get caught up. Also, Raw Talk (and Talking Smack for that matter) have basically become WWE’s (Vince’s) way to let the audience know exactly what WWE wants the public to think about all the angles. It is their attempt to drown any independent thought by the viewers. The in-studio hosts lay out all the angles so that a four-year-old can understand things. One note that I just noticed is that at every opportunity the hosts tout that a wrestler they just talked about will be on the Bump later in the week, turning these shows into a promo for another interview show that these shows used to be. It makes me mad and sad that the older format of these shows is gone.
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