Raw as I watch it - 14/10 or 10/14 or 15/10

Show starts off with Seth vs Bray/Fiend feud recap and some clips from HIAC before theme and intro start. Bray is on a different brand? I suppose the Fiend should not really care about brands if he is so demonic.

Fireworks

Out comes The Man, big pop. Commentators discuss how she was the first draft pick and how there's 40 talents left on the draft.
Becky cuts promo, talking about kicking Sasha Banks all over the shop, but sounds like Banksy is injured - even though this has been advertised up until tonight. So Becky talks up how she's ready to rip someone's arm off, as Flair then comes out - I assume this is now her opponent? Winner gets #1 pick for her draft - the graphic shows Charlotte Flair as being on Raw, which is excellently done as either a spoiler or a stupid mistake.

Charlotte has a mic and says maybe she'll got drafted to Raw and they'll fight forever. Charlotte talks about wanting to be friends and then blindsides her with a punch and they start to scrap. There's no ref, they're slugging it out and a ref finally arrives, three of them, to split them up. King wants to know if the match has even started, because he's an idiot. Brawling out of the ring, goes to adverts. Oh, god, I've got to watch adverts. American adverts. Don't vape, it's unhealthy and can lead to smoking.

We're back and the match begins. Winner earns number one draft choice for their brand. King "loves the draft." Charlotte is yet to be drafted, we are reminded. The new commentators are talking much more than last week already. Chops from Flair, european uppercuts from Lynch. THEY ARE STILL TALKING ABOUT THE EXECUTIVES NON STOP. Hope the Robot is back. "One of the most stories rivalries in WWE history" Also the first time they've competed 1v1 on Raw, apparently. Match is fine. Ok, some of it is really not fine. Some of it is sketchy and awkward. Lynch just did a worse top rope jump and miss than any Ric Flair did in all his career. It's quite nice that the commentators, at least King and Dio, want Raw to win so want Becky to win. Charlotte can't pin Becky, sits up and laughs in angry frustration. As she does that, Lynch suddenly rolls her up and get the 3 count. Becky wins. Charlotte beaten by two rolls ups in two shows.

Monday Night Raw gets first pick in the draft.

Raw tag titles are on the line tonight, Roode and Ziggler vs Viking Raiders. Fury and Strowman contract signing advertised too. 40 "superstars" available tonight, it was 30 on Smackdown. Draft starts after a Charly Caruso interview with Rollins, who gets a decent cheer. Rollins throws in a cheap HOMETOWN plug before talking about how The Fiend is still a threat, even though Rollins thought he had ended it at HIAC - the crowd boo him talking about HIAC. That is excellent. Rollins declares that "tonight, I'm going Fiend hunting" and he is going to find him and end this and "burn it down." Adverts

Before we come back, the famous BUY BUY BUY stock exchange guy talks the draft. Yup. Steph comes out to do the Draft. She bigs up the executives influencing the draft and we have just seen the "war rooms"

Raw picks Rollins first - King is shocked! King is easily shocked.
Smackdown picks Brock Lesnar - I cannot believe the two respective champs of each brand have picked their champions
Raw picks Charlotte Flair - THIS IS SUCH A SURPRISE AFTER THEY SHOWED US IT EARLIER
Smackdown picks The New Day - they were never leaving
Raw picks Andrade (with Zelina Vega) - talked up as the future of WWE

The Draft Panel is back - Renee with Booker, Beth Phoenix and Samoa Joe. Joe gets a huge cheer. They talk each pick up, basically. Joe talks best.

Andrade is out for a match, accompanied by Zelina, who has a mic in hand. She delivers a message that - whilst calling the four horsewomen the four horsefaces - that Andrade was drafted as the main event or whatever, not anyone else. Everyone now gets to lose to Andrade. Adverts

Back from the break and it's mid match between Andrade and Ali. Zelina doing her best to interrupt Ali doing big moves.

BREAKING NEWS during the match. Rollins vows to find and fight Bray tonight, Bray announces new episode of Firefly Fun House. This was presented on a news ticker on the bottom of the screen and the commentators talked it up.

Good match this. If this was NXT, you could build this as a main event of a Takeover quite easily. Zelina tries to block another suicide dive by Ali and he just backs up then jumps over her. Andrade rolls into ring, ref isnt watching, Zelina hits a hurricanrana on Ali. Ali is rolled in, Andrade hits finisher, Andrade wins.

Round Two of the Draft

Raw picks Kabuki Warriors
Smackdown picks Daniel Bryan - but it makes sense that WWE went with the barely used Kabuki Warriors before that
Raw picks Rusev - same brand as Bobby Lashley
Smackdown picks Bayley, a huge shock there
Raw picks Aleister Black - now hopefully they use him

Viking Raiders come out for the tag title match and we go to break

We're an hour in and it's been watchable. Two decent matches, two rounds of the draft. No Bobby Lashley pretending to f*** Lana

Tag title match starts fast! Nearly over in a minute, well teased. Good match, worth watching, won't spoil the result if you fancy a watch.

Result:

After the break, Viking Raiders cut a promo. Big up how they've won the IWGP, ROH, NXT and Raw Tag Team champions. The Raid is here. Good promo, really, the accolades sounded impressive

Round Three of the Draft

Raw picks Cedric Alexander
Smackdown picks Shinsuke Nakamura - keeping the IC title too.
Raw picks Humberto Carrillo moves from 205 to Raw
Smackdown picks Ali
Raw picks Erick Rowan - no talk of Harper, so could well be that he was used for the HIAC stuff and done.

Dio Maddin talks about how he'd heard the Robot on Fox really wanted Erick Rowan.

Aleister Black is on his way out. He's facing Eric Young, who was already in the ring and looked like an unnamed local jobber. Wins relatively quickly with that cool submission choke move.

Round Four of the Draft

Raw picks Buddy Murphy
Smackdown picks Ziggler and Roode together
Raw picks Jinder Mahal, who we all hoped was finished.
Smackdown picks Carmella goes to Smackdown. Surely Truth will be heading that way too. Surprise she's there with Carmella
Raw picks OH MY! R Truth stays on Raw. Although, it's 24/7, anywhere, so he can run over to Smackdown, one presumes.

We go backstage to the boys, the Street Profits. Monday Night Smoke - The OC then come and interrupt. They seem to be going along, being cool. But then it starts to get insulting, a little tension. They seem to walk away, then beat down the Street Profits. I wanna see them boys face The Club, definitely.

Now Ricochet is out on the stage.

Adverts

Shelton Benjamin is in the ring and they'll be having one of them matches. King says Ricochet reminds him of Spider-Man. I wonder what Shelton does with his time. He'd be a good NXT pick up, a bit of name value, decent style. Fine match, Ricochet wins.

Hype for Tyson Fury. Then a scene where Lana is getting a massage and asking for it harder. It's just a normal masseuse. Then we go to adverts after a 30 second ankle massage. AEW can't touch that kind of action. Subway sandwiches look much better in America. Arby's looks good too. Chance the Rapper advertises Doritos and raps, Chance is a genuine GOAT of this world. Advert for fungal cream "tell your doctor you've been somewhere where fungal infections are common" - a brothel?

Speaking of which, we come back to the Lana massage segment. The masseuse offers to go deeper, Lana says she likes it deeper. Bobby Lashley comes in, to the room I mean, and takes over, putting his hand really far up the towel and Lana saying "I like that" before he massages. "You've such a gentle touch, Rusev was never that good." Lashley lifts the towel and Lana flips over. Honest to god.

King's music plays and he is in the ring to moderate the Fury/Strowman contract signing. Strowman out first then Fury, who has some very generic music and a yellow titantron background. They sit down at the standard contract signing desk and talk trash. Strowman cuts a promo. It's generic and fine. Fury talks, the crowd WHAT him. Fury delivers his best promo so far, less wooden, still not great but better. Both men stand and King runs away. Braun breaks the table, for some reason. Fury lifts the pen and shows it off, tries to break it and can't, comically I think, then does. It was a bit s***. My favourite line of commentary "did you see the state of that pen?" - Dio is an odd one.

Fifth round of the draft

Raw picks Samoa Joe
Smackdown picks The Miz - the Robot is so excited that he hugs someone
Raw picks Akira Tozawa - hope he gets used
Smackdown picks King Corbin - which makes Smackdown 20% less watchable
Raw picks Shelton Benjamin - every show needs a jobber.

Out comes Buddy Murphy for his Raw debut. And it's against Cedric Alexander. Why don't they do more random tag team matches on TV? They could save this very good match being just chucked out there, have them with bloody anyone else to make it interesting. Decent little match, Buddy Murphy wins.

Breaking News! Falls Count Anywhere at Crown Jewel for the title: The Fiend vs Seth Rollins. Wonder if they can find a way where Bray pins Rollins not in the ring and it's not allowed.

Street Profits cut promo on The OC, they want to take them on, but they wanna do it with a third pal. Intense. The boys are good.

Sixth and final round of the Draft

Raw picks Rey Mysterio
Smackdown picks Shorty (sigh) Gable - MORE MATCHES WITH BARON AHEAD
Raw picks Titus O'Neil - Cesaro ain't getting of Titus
Smackdown picks Elias
Raw picks Liv Morgan - not been seen since she went away to get a new look.

Quite a few on the free agents list. Apparently there is some sort of big trade gonna happen between the rosters, that's what Booker says on the weird desk thing. Free agents can be snapped up by 12 midnight tomorrow. Late nights in the exec rooms, cameras at Stoke, Jim White will be on it.

Kabuki Warriors come out for their advertised match with Natalya and mystery partner. The partner is Lacey Evans. Which is dumb. They're friends now, cos Lacey took Natalya to her limit.

I can't remember when I put my banana bread in.

Sami Zayn hasn't been picked? But he was in the background of Nakamura's pick picture, so guess he's with him?

This tag match is going on. I'm unsure who the heels are. Kabuki Warriors are being lackadaisical and a bit cocky. But the other team are Natalya and Lacey, who no one wants to like. Lacey cos she's a heel, Natalya because she's dull. I've lost concentration - Mike Kanellis has asked for his release https://twitter.com/realmikebennett/status/1183855911619776512?s=21
Asuka wins with a sneaky roll up. Best move in WWE.

Firefly Fun House - Bray doesn't have his red jumper on. Fans seem to be booing. Yup, they're booing. Rollins is in the fun house. They're fighting. Seth kinda wins. Fans are jeering. Seth is burning the Firefly Fun House. Randy Orton will be livid.

That's the end of the show.

Where the f*** was the Street Profits vs The OC?

Interesting that during this draft they’ve kept all the couples together instead of their usual of splitting them all up.

Samo wrote:Interesting that during this draft they’ve kept all the couples together instead of their usual of splitting them all up.

I reckon they only moved Andrade and Zelina to Raw because they'd moved Charlotte and Aleister Black to Raw! Also they broke up Truth and Carmella to keep Corey Graves happy

The order of some of these draft picks makes no sense. They’ve been pushing King Corbin as a top guy all summer but he’s drafted after Jinder Mahal? Likewise with Elias. Billed as the ‘biggest aquisition in SmackDown history” in the shake up earlier in the year drafted after Titus Oniell who’s last TV match that wasnt for the 24/7 title was in 2018.

Marky wrote:

Samo wrote:Interesting that during this draft they’ve kept all the couples together instead of their usual of splitting them all up.

I reckon they only moved Andrade and Zelina to Raw because they'd moved Charlotte and Aleister Black to Raw! Also they broke up Truth and Carmella to keep Corey Graves happy

If people remember the last shake up, they have moved Andrade to be with Flair and Rollins n Becky together before. It was noted that they now keep couples together, so it’s not new.