Vince Russo’s The Brand Recap – RAW & Smackdown Analysis, Joe’s Clown Trunks, Owens and Zayn Have Heat? More!

Russo is joined on today’s show by his co-host Jeff Lane, Kenny Bolin, and Big Vito.

Russo says this week’s RAW and Smackdown Live had to be the worst 5-hour follow up to a major PPV in WWE’s history. He believes that Stephanie McMahon has to be the least cool character in the business right now, and she’s very frustrating to watch because it’s quite clear that she thinks she’s cool.

Bolin says he recalls a time when Stephanie McMahon was a gorgeous woman. However, the longer that she’s with Triple H, the more he’s starting to make her look like Chyna by turning her into a gym rat.

Russo says there was no need for Braun Strowman to be in the opening segment of RAW this week, and his inclusion there made no sense whatsoever. He thinks the only reason that Strowman was in that segment was to set up the match with Jason Jordan later in the night, and that’s just lazy booking in his opinion.

Russo goes on to say that there was a much easier way to get Strowman involved in this angle. Angle should have named Strowman as the first member of Team RAW, which would have pleased Strowman and resulted in him having Angle’s back. Then when Triple H attacked Angle at Survivor Series, Strowman getting angry would have made much more sense.

Nonetheless, the announcement that Strowman would be squaring off with Jordan later on RAW was met with a negative reaction from the live audience and the commentary team did nothing to sell it to the viewers at home. Russo actually tweeted this, calling Graves ‘Peewee Herman’ and criticizing his work. Graves tweeted back, attacking Russo’s Christianity and Russo thought that was very weak. He says that comparing Graves to Peewee Herman might have been a mistake on his end, because Peewee Herman was actually over.

Russo says he couldn’t care less about the match between Samoa Joe and Finn Balor, but he wishes that Joe would change out of his ‘clown shorts’. Bolin says that he’s glad Joe won with his finishing hold, and if Balor would have pinned Joe clean in this match it would have been just as well to send Joe packing because his stock would have hit the floor.

Lane points out that The Miz dropped the Intercontinental Title to Roman Reigns on RAW this week because he’s set to go film another movie. He mentions that WWE must have known this was coming, and they should have written a lengthy program culminating at Survivor Series, so the Title change would have meant something.

Instead, they threw a random match together between The Miz and Reigns out of the blue, and now Reigns is the Champion. Bolin mentions that it’s strange for main-eventers to come back down the card and compete for the secondary Titles, but he was happy that Reigns celebrated his Title win passionately. Reigns made the belt mean something because he looked like he was genuinely happy to win that Title.

Bolin wonders what WWE is planning in bringing six more women up to the main roster right now. Lane assumes that WWE is loading up the women’s division because they’re planning a women’s Royal Rumble match this year. Russo says that none of these women look like stars, they just look like enhancement talents. WWE had a couple of women who were over, but they’ve since ruined that. He says that Sasha Banks and Bayley aren’t even over anymore.

Moving into Smackdown, Russo says the fact that this show opens with Kevin Owens & Sami Zayn tells you everything you need to know about the state of Smackdown right now. Back in the attitude era, WWE would base their shows around The Rock, Austin, or Vince McMahon. Nowadays, Smackdown revolves around Owens and Zayn, and that’s just sad.

Bolin says that Owens looks disgusting and he needs to get in shape. It’s almost like Owens refuses to get himself in shape at this point, and the more that people tell him to get in shape, the more he refuses to do so. He also thought that Zayn was doing his best taxi cab driver impression on Tuesday.

Russo couldn’t believe that after Zayn picked up the win in the Lumberjack main event, WWE took his heat away by having The New Day get the better of him while Owens ran off. Russo thinks WWE booked it this way because Zayn and Owens have legit heat backstage, and this was how they sent them a message. Bolin says that those two guys can’t have that much heat because they’re all over the show every week.

That sums up today’s episode of Vince Russo’s The Brand. You can listen to the show yourself anytime here, and I’ll catch ya tomorrow for another recap!