RAW Recap: 11/16/15 - When Life Gives You Booty, Make Bootyade

Via WWE.com

Before I start doing this segment, I thought I might talk a little bit about my wrestling-habits. I grew up watching wrestling with my older brother, and it was one of the few things we really did together while we were little. It was the end of the Attitude Era to the start of the Ruthless Aggression Era (so my memory of it stems from miniscule parts of 1999 until probably like 2005). The perfect picture of my wrestling fandom is probably the roster of WWF No Mercy for the Nintendo 64 or the first few PlayStation Smackdown! games. Steve Austin's still around, The Rock's the greatest wrestler on the planet, the Hardys/Dudleys/E&C are the best thing ever. Michaels is gone temporarily, but he'll be back soon. Just so much talent. But around the time I was 10 or so, I stopped paying full attention because that's around the age you realize that wrestling is dumb and for babies.

I paid attention here and there for the next few years, but usually I just stuck to the video games and the occasional episode of Smackdown for my fix. All my care for wrestling dissolved by the time I hit 7th or 8th grade. In high school I would get curious here and there and I was at least vaguely aware of what happened. I knew at least a little about Daniel Bryan and CM Punk because I still knew some wrestling fans, but didn't check them out in-depth. When I hit college, I started to get more involved in it. I bought a DVD of the WWE's best cage matches on a whim because it was like $5 at Wal-Mart and I love a good bargain. That made me remember just how dope wrestling is, and I would find myself in Youtube wormholes watching old Shawn Michaels or Hardy Boyz matches, though I didn't really care to check anything new out.

This past summer I finally bit the bullet. I heard about the opportunity for a free month of WWE Network and subscribed so I could watch all the PPVs my parents wouldn't let me buy as a kid. Eventually I got curious and checked out some newer matches, and became engaged in the new storylines, even though some of them were absolutely atrocious (I started watching just as the whole Ziggler/Rusev/Lana/Summer Rae love-rectangle became a thing... ugh). I've been watching near-religiously ever since.

Basically those introductory paragraphs were just me saying, "Hey there are a lot of gaps in my knowledge from 2005-2015 so bear with me please."

I promise my introductions won't be this long and wordy in the future. Actual RAW #analysis after the jump.

[Note: This is late due to busy schedule this week/the fact I didn't have this all planned out until like Tuesday. Gonna have this out Tuesdays from here on out, Wednesday at the latest]

A Re-Introduction

The seventeenth time's the charm when it comes to having your own blog, right? I thought so.

So before I start posting again I might as well introduce what I want to do with my blog, and before I do that I should just introduce myself.

My name is Chris Gibbons. I'm a Communicative Arts student from the Metro Detroit area who currently resides in Milwaukee. I like wrestling and Detroit/University of Michigan sports and music and TV and stand-up comedy and sleeping and movies and you (probably). I want to be a journalist because I don't like making money or job security. That's probably about all you need to know.

The Gibb V17.3 brought to you by the Power of Positivity

I've used this blog to practice my writing before I started writing for other places on the internet that people actually care about. In late summer 2014, I started writing reviews for Potholes in My Blog. It was an amazing experience and I'm eternally grateful to them for giving my writing a chance. Unfortunately the site went on indefinite hiatus last spring, which really sucks. Potholes was one of the best websites on the entire internet when it came to thoughtful commentary on hip-hop and independent music. I'm not saying that because I wrote there. I was actually terrified of submitting my stuff because I associated it with such quality stuff and I was just a kid with no experience who wanted to talk about rap music. They're still the best and I wish it was still around.

Now, I'm writing about a variety of things at a few different places. I write about hip-hop (and occasionally R&B) for The Boombox, which is pretty awesome. I was able to get that opportunity from one of Potholes editors (seriously, any success I ever have in the field will probably stem from starting at that site). I also talk about the Michigan Wolverines on GBM Wolverine. Even though I've got my writing out at other places, I wanted to start this up again because I need all the practice I can get. Here's what y'all can expect me to post around here:

• Music: I write about hip-hop/R&B over at The Boombox, but I can't cover everything I'd like to talk about. As that site focuses more on mainstream hip-hop, these will more-than-likely cover independent hip-hop, indie rock, pop and occasionally other genres that I dabble in.
• Wrestling: I re-kindled my love of wrestling this past summer, and I really want to write about it. Most stuff I post on here will probably cover wrestling, honestly. I plan on doing weekly articles on WWE RAW, NXT all WWE PPVs, and probably Lucha Underground when that gets started again. I might cover Smackdown if it has anything worthwhile.
• Movies or TV shows or whatever I'm watching on Netflix if I'm really inspired by, really
• Detroit sports or maybe sports in general if there's a topic I want to discuss. Probably mostly painful discussion about why the Lions are bad and make me sad.

I guess that's about it. Tonight I'm hoping to get a recap from last Monday's RAW (man, it's a doozy) and probably something about the latest episode of NXT. Alrighty then.