RAW and Smackdown Live Recaptory (Goldberg Returns, SummerSlam)

raw
Photo / WWE

Raw opens with superstars on stage as the ring bell tolls for the victims of the recent mass shootings. This is the go-home edition of Raw prior to SummerSlam. Samoa Joe is out, standing on the announcer’s desk threatening to preempt the show after being accused of being the one who set up Roman Reigns last week. He directs some pointed comments at Michael Cole since Cole had been parroting some WWE.com poll numbers which suggested that 80% of the WWE Universe felt Samoa Joe had something to do with it.

Outcomes The Man, WWE Raw Women’s Champion Becky Lynch for a women’s tag team match. Becky Lynch and Charlotte Flair against WWE Hall of Famer Trish Stratus and Natalya.

Trish doesn’t get tagged into the match at all. Charlotte leaves Becky to face her opponents by herself. Natalya then locks the Sharpshooter on Becky Lynch but she refuses to break the hold after Becky reaches the ropes, so the match ends in a disqualification with Charlotte Flair and Becky Lynch announced as the winners. Trish tries to get Nattie off of Becky and she got shoved for her efforts. She then helped a limping Becky out of the ring.

Rey Mysterio vs Andrade in a revenge match after last week. Andrade ripped off Rey’s mask after defeating him in a gauntlet match. With assistance from Zelina, Andrade picked up the victory over Rey.

24/7 recap from last week. Mike and Maria Kanellis are in the OBGYN office for a check-up for the pregnant 24/7 Champion, Maria. As she is laying on her bed, Mike tells her she needs to relax. He then lays on her as if he’s giving her a hug but then the nurse in the room counts to three and he has now become the new 24/7 champion after pinning his wife. He leaves the doctor’s office and runs into R-Truth and Carmella. R-Truth is in disguise and eventually rolls Mike up for a three count to once again become the 24/7 champion.

Paul Heyman and the WWE Universal heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar are in the ring for a promo. A replay video is shown of the beating that Brock Lesnar gave to Seth Rollins last week. Seth Rollins walks out holding a chair and goes to the ring. He attempts to attack Brock but again gets another beat-down and two F5s for his efforts.

Kurt Angle is backstage and the Street Profits offer Kurt some milk in a red solo cup. Kurt promised his wife he wouldn’t get too crazy but agreed to have milk. Drew McIntyre appears and tells Kurt to make sure he calls the match down the middle.

The Viking Raiders with their usual weekly squash tag team match.

They show a video highlight package of recently deceased WWE Hall of Famer Harley Race.

Kurt comes out first prepared to officiate the match between Cedric Alexander and Drew McIntyre. Cedric comes out next but he gets jumped by Drew from behind coming down the ramp. The two brawl outside until the lights go out. The Fiend appears in the ring and gives Kurt the Mandible Claw.

WWE Smackdown Live Tag Team Champions The New Day versus the WWE Raw tag team champions, Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows, the OC. the WWE United States Champion, AJ Styles is at ringside along with them. Styles gets an individual entrance even though he’s not in the match.

AJ gets involved in the match and it ends in DQ as he and the OC stomp out New Day until Ricochet comes out. Back from commercial, it’s a six-man tag match as Ricochet joins the new day to take on the OC and AJ Styles. The OC wins after a Magic Killer to Xavier.

Samoa Joe is back to take over the show until Roman apologizes to him. He sits in the ring with a chair until someone tells him Roman is pulling in the backstage area. Joe goes out to the back and starts to bark at Roman. Reigns get out of the car and go to approach Joe, a car zooms into the picture and swipes the back of the vehicle Roman Reigns was in. He drove inside the front seat right before the impact. Samoa Joe yelled for someone to get some help.

Up next is a women’s tag team fatal 4-way elimination match for the Women’s Tag Team Championships featuring The IIconics (Peyton Royce and Billie Kay) vs. Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross vs. Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville vs. The Kabuki Warriors (Asuka and Kairi Sane) w/Paige.

The IIconics were the first team eliminated which means there will be new women’s Tag Team Champions at the conclusion of the match. Mandy Rose and Sonya DeVille where the next team eliminated which left us down to Nikki Cross and Alexa Bliss versus the Kabuki Warriors. Alexa Bliss hit Twisted Bliss on Kairi Sane to pick up the victory and her newest piece of WWE Women’s Championship gold alongside her tag team partner, Nikki Cross.

Miz TV is up next with special guest WWE Hall of Famer, The Heartbreak Kid, Shawn Michaels. Dolph Ziggler comes out next and does his usual verse about stealing the show. He then signs a contract that he THINKS gives him a match against HBK, but then Bill Goldberg’s music hits and it’s revealed that Goldberg will be his opponent for SummerSlam. HBK hit Ziggler with Sweet Chin Music to end the show.

SmackDown Live
Photo /@wwe.com

Smackdown Live comes to us from Detroit, Michigan and opens with Charlotte Flair in the ring talking about Trish Stratus and their upcoming match at SummerSlam. She promises to shatter Trish’s dreams of competing on the big stage in her hometown in front of her country and family. She then tells the production truck to play a video of her highlights, but it turns out to be a Trish Stratus highlight reel. Out comes Trish, who tells Charlotte that she might be the queen, but she’s no Trish Stratus. Charlotte then tells Trish that she’s going to make her bow down to the queen which causes Trish to slap her really hard across the face.

Goldberg’s music begins to play and the cameras cut to the backstage area dressing room with a door that has Dolph Ziggler’s name on it. security knocks on his dressing-room door and he comes out doing his best Goldberg impression. Rey Mysterio is his opponent in this upcoming match, but before Mysterio can make it to the ring Dolph Ziggler attacks him and ends up giving him two superkicks outside of the ring. He grabs a mic and tells Goldberg that he’s not next and that their match at SummerSlam will be his last.

Ali comes out and checks on Rey Mysterio then jumps in the ring and attacks Dolph Ziggler. the show goes to a commercial break and when it returns, we have a match underway. It was a pretty spirited contest and Ali gave Ziggler his best but fell short and was pinned for the 1-2-3 after a Superkick.

A video package of the incidents that have befallen Roman Reigns recently plays and after the commercial break, he’s doing a sit-down interview. Back from commercial and they show a Monday Night Raw recap of Brock Lesnar beating down Seth Rollins again. Roman Reigns does his interview backstage and apologizes to Samoa Joe for the way his name has been mentioned as someone of interest in the recent backstage attacks. He wants answers and he’s going to get them.

Natalya and Ember moon will square off next in a matchup of the two number one contenders for the Raw and SmackDown women’s championships. Both will receive their shots at SummerSlam. They get underway and brawl inside the ring for a few minutes. It appeared as if Ember was going to hit her finisher before Natalya rolled outside.

They fought outside for a little bit before Natalya locked in the Sharpshooter on Ember Moon and the match ended in a double count-out. Natalya held on to the Sharpshooter well after the bell had rung, and Bayley came down the ramp to get her to release the hold on Ember.

The Kevin Owens Show is next, and his guest is his opponent at SummerSlam, Shane McMahon. Kevin is in the ring and he calls for Shane McMahon. Shane walks down to the ring and makes the announcer do his “best in the world” introduction before they get started.

Kevin challenged Shane to put his career on the line as well. Shane declined and said it doesn’t matter whether Kevin Owens loses by pinfall, submission, count-out or disqualification. The end result is that his career will be over. Shane then challenges Kevin to a fight right then and there and they begin to clear the ring of the KO show signs and the chairs.

Elias enters the ring and attacks Kevin from behind. He and Shane start to beat on Kevin until Kevin throws Elias out of the ring. The brawl continues outside and Elias eats a stunner on top of the announce table. Shane McMahon then gets the upper hand and proceeds to pummel Kevin Owens. Shane also dumps the announce table over on a prone Kevin Owens. After that, he set a chair in front of Kevin’s face and delivered a running Shane McMahon Coast to Coast before kicking the chair directly into Kevin’s face.

Sami Zayn is out next to talk about his challenge to Aleister Black. He says that he offered Aleister a fight and that Black has responded with silence. Aleister appears on the screen and tells Sami Zayn that their fight isn’t happening at SummerSlam, it’s happening right now. After some back-and-forth action, Aleister black picked up the victory after hitting Black Mass on Sami Zayn. So apparently, these two won’t be fighting at SummerSlam.

Shelton Benjamin is backstage and does that weird look again and says, “Well.”

Bray Wyatt’s Firefly Fun House is up next. He calls Finn’s courage ignorance in disguise and says that The Fiend is coming for him.

Next up is a video package mixed in with some commentary from Kofi Kingston about his feud and upcoming match at SummerSlam with the Viper, Randy Orton. He says that once he beats Randy Orton and holds up the WWE Championship they’ll all see who the stupid one is. A reference to Randy Orton saying “stupid” repeatedly after he hit Kofi with an RKO back in 2009.

Smackdown Live Tag Team Champions, the New Day with Big E and Xavier Woods took on the new Daniel Bryan and Rowan in a tag team match. It was a back-and-forth match up with no single team gaining any real momentum until later in the match. Daniel Bryan and Rowan worked over Xavier Woods until he made the hot tag to Big E, who then proceeded to show them both why he is the Undisputed muscle of the New Day.

The match, however, ended with a disqualification after Rowan grabbed the steel steps and clocked Xavier Woods with them. He and Daniel Bryan then laid a vicious beat down on the New Day and left them lying in the ring.

Roman Reigns is in the backstage area and he heads into the locker room. He tells everyone of the superstars to leave except for Buddy Murphy. He puts a chair down in front of Buddy and asks him did he have anything to do with the incidents of the past week. He says that he saw the video footage and he saw Buddy Murphy was there and he wants to know if he was a part of it.

Murphy tells him that he had nothing to do with it and even if he did know, he still wouldn’t tell Roman. From there Roman precedes to drag buddy Murphy around the locker room like a rag doll. He shoves his elbow in Buddy Murphy’s face and asks him once again who did it and Buddy Murphy tells him that it was Rowan.

To visit our archive editions of the WWE Raw and Smackdown Live Recapatory click here

What's up folks, I'm Hab and I've been a wrestling fan for more than thirty years. I grew up on the NWA and Crockett Promotions in the Triad City of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. My favorite wrestler of all time is Bret Hart. At the moment, I'm a Cesaro hipster and The World's Biggest Luke Harper fan. I was at the Smackdown! taping when Brock Lesnar threw Zach Gowen down a flight of steps in the New Orleans Arena and laughed about it for the next two days. I have a few loves in my life, my beautiful daughter, my family, professional wrestling and hip-hop are just some of them.