Look, cards on the table, I kind of love this stupid storyline. I wasn't paying much attention to WWE at all and then last month my brother and best friend flew over from Scotland to visit me in Texas and for three Mondays on the trot we drank beers and watched RAW. I haven't watched full episodes of RAW on three consecutive, uninterrupted weeks since probably 2009 and there's still a bunch of nothingness on every episode and they last about six hours, but either way I just really got a kick out of the Liv/Dom stuff. Then Rhea came back and the next week my brother and friend flew home again and I haven't watched a minute of RAW since then. But Rhea is really fun and they were obviously going to turn Dom so I threw on the Summerslam. I also should point out that the aesthetic here was magnificent. And by that, before anyone labels me a pervert, I mean the clear sky and the outdoor arena and the ramp and general setup. It was very Summerslam 1992, which was the first one I saw as a young lad and thus we all remember the simpler times. I thought as a full package this was great stuff. Obviously the Dom thing was always lingering in the background, but they never made a huge deal of it until pretty much the very end, and even then it was fairly subtle for WWE. Rhea and Liv were both awesome in their roles. Ripley is a juggernaut and out to wring Liv's neck for several reasons, and I loved how Morgan would just outright refuse to engage at the start. She was channelling Jamie Dundee in how she'd scoot in or out the ring depending on how Rhea went about chasing her down. Eventually Rhea would catch her though, because you can only run for so long, and when they did the staredown as Rhea slithered towards her, Liv going wide-eyed knowing she'd been turned in enough of a circle that she'd swallowed her own tail, the palpable sense of "okay now someone is getting GOT" was really cool. You knew Liv would go to the shoulder at some point and in a lot of ways that felt like the one chance she had, but when she did go there it didn't come off as flukey as opposed to resourceful. She's half the size of Rhea, of course she's going to use any advantage she can muster, but it was fair game and it wasn't a shortcut. The spot where the shoulder got rammed into the post looked brutal as fuck too. I bought that she'd actually torn the thing out legit at first and her shoulder joint looking wonky in the first place (maybe from the surgery?) added to the illusion. I thought her selling from that point on was superb and Liv was a terror going after it. Rhea voluntarily throwing herself into the announce desk before popping the shoulder back in might've been a wee bit hokey, but I still kind of loved it, the crowd bought it fully and Liv backing up going "oh fuck" made it even better. I also liked how it was Dom taking Liv's tope that made Rhea take matters into her own hands. I've dislocated my shoulder before and thinking I was badass enough to put it back in myself is one of the stupidest things I've ever done in a life full of stupid things. When Rhea saw her man get decked it didn't matter, she was walking through hell and back and she was for dragging Liv with her for the journey. The stuff with the chair came off great and when Dom stopped Rhea from going bonkers with it initially I thought they might actually NOT be pulling the trigger on him turning. I mean, he was right, wasn't he? Swing the chair and Rhea gets disqualified, clearly he's using common sense. In the end it was out of preservation for the other woman but in the moment it was hard to fault him. I bit a thousand percent on the Oblivion onto the chair and I think everyone else did too. It was a phenomenal nearfall and when she kicked out I thought she'd go on and win it from there. Of course the chair came back into play anyway and they did pull the trigger on that heel turn, Dom cheating on Mami, stealing away her slice of revenge. Maybe he really is the son of Eddie Guerrero.
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