Tim Kail's Wrestling Journal, 3/28/25

CM Punk walks to the ring

I know I wrote in my last journal that I'd push through the RAW malaise and keep writing through WrestleMania. I don't know if I can keep that promise. I feel like Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood, "I can't keep doing this on my own...with this...erm...people."

Raw is, very simply, bad television.

How can I write a good review of the show when it all boils down to that? I don't want to depress my readers, but I will if I maintain my current course. The reviews have gotten shorter and angrier, a bleak reflection of the show itself. There isn't a single wrestler who really excites me. Not even Heel Cena is all that interesting. I can't believe WWE didn't explore the fact that Michael Cole called Cena a “prick” last week. Watching Cena beat the shit out of Cole would have been visceral and unsettling. Cody could have made the save and Cena would have further cemented himself as a heel. I liked that he said he was going to "ruin wrestling" for everybody, but I don't think he explored that concept enough.

I'm disappointed with Paul Levesque's booking. His main roster has none of the excitement and purpose that his NXT roster had in 2014/2015. A lot of wrestlers are missing in action, and those who are staples of the show feel adrift, aimless.

I still want to do the podcast. I have fun creating that each week. But the Raw Review is the opposite of fun. It reminds me of homework, an essay about a book I didn't have the patience to read.

None of this is helped by the fact that my dog has cancer. Rocky, who we've had for three years, has cancer in his lymph node, spleen, and mouth. The past few months have been nothing but tests and bad news. We don't know how much longer we have with him and it's weighing on me. I love this little dog. He's my boy. He jumps up and barks every time I come home, and then licks my face. The death, whether sudden or impending, of an animal is gut-wrenching. It also puts things in perspective. Why subject myself to a television show I despise and then write reviews of said show? How do I make the most out of my time here on Earth? How do I get the most out of Rocky being here and now?

After writing that last sentence I felt something fall into place in my mind. I'm going to stop writing The Raw Review. I apologize to those of you who look forward to it each week. But for the sake of my mental health I have to stop.

I think it was a worthwhile experiment. I have three months of the show chronicled, which isn't too shabby. I just wish in all that time there was a single episode I could easily call "great". But I can't. After watching and analyzing the show for three months without interruption, I've come to the conclusion that it's never going to get any better. The show is, aggressively, what it is. In that time the wrestler who has received the best treatment is Penta. As much as I appreciate his push intellectually, I don't really enjoy it on an emotional level. CM Punk has been cutting good promos on a consistent basis, but as much as I love him I need more from the rest of the show if I'm going to be entertained.

One thing that frustrates me is that I don't feel I can adequately convey why I think RAW is such terrible television. I believe it’s more than just my opinion - I think there’s some objective, artist tenet that’s being violated each week. I feel like you either "get it" (the “badness”) or you don't. I don't want to ruin anyone's good time, but for me this show watches like beige paint drying on a wall. Opening fifteen-minute promo, backstage segment, match, backstage interview, match, backstage interview that gets interrupted by a heel, match, vignette of the previous week's events, main event match. There is no intrigue, no color, no life. It's wrestling paint by numbers. It's pretty to look at, but it's core is hollow.

I wish WWE had an off season. It would give both the wrestlers and the viewers time to heal. I am sympathetic to the fact that WWE is a huge organism that can't respond well to sudden changes. Completely revamping its style of presentation would take months to work out, and they just don't have the time to manage sweeping changes. And I don't think they even want to make sweeping changes. I think they believe their shows are perfectly fine. I've been told I shouldn't judge wrestling against prestige TV, but I wonder, why not? It's on television and aims to entertain, after all. Its competition are shows like Severance (which I watched the entirety of over the course of a week). Raw pales in comparison. Raw is silly, childish, inane, and boring. It fluctuates wildly in quality from one match and one segment to the next. There's no center, holding it all together, pushing narratives forward. Just Karrion Kross hiding behind a storage crate.

I don't think Paul Levesque has yet worked out how to produce a huge show like RAW. There are so many moving parts that he's had to hold fast to the same reliable format for fear of derailing the experience. And maybe I'm wrong! Maybe fans are getting exactly what they want from WWE's prescriptive style of storytelling. All I know is that it could be so much better. And lowering one's expectations "because it's just wrestling" does a disservice to the art.

All right.

I've said enough.

I don't want to blow a gasket as I beat this same drum over and over.

The last thing I want to say is "thank you". Thank you to you, whoever you are, for reading my work the past few months. I hope it's been fun and edifying. And I'm not saying I'll never write a RAW REVIEW again. I know I will. But it will be on my terms, when the mood firmly strikes, rather than in the interest of hitting some arbitrary deadline.

Be well and may the moment of pop be with you.

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