By Jon Mezzera, PWTorch Specialist

RAW HITS

Opening Segment: This week's Raw was much better than last week's, and it started off hot with the verbal exchange between John Cena and Paul Heyman. The set up for Cena's match against Brock Lesnar at SummerSlam is quite simple. Lesnar is the biggest threat to Cena, he plans on not only beating him, but victimizing him, but Cena vows to rise to the occasion and fight with all that he has to defeat Lesnar. The mic work here from Cena and Heyman was very strong. The impassioned promo from Cena was some of his best mic work in a long time. It is a reminder of how good Cena could have been throughout his career if he had just stayed more serious and shown more passion and done away with the silliness and infantile humor. Cesaro's appearance was a bit strange given the odd end to his relationship with Heyman last week, but it did give fans a hook to keep watching to see him wrestle Cena.

Cena vs. Cesaro: Speaking of that match, Cena and Cesaro had a good match against each other. The match went 14 minutes and was fun to watch. I would not mind seeing these two in a PPV main event down the line. Both Cena and Cesaro had the chance to show off their impressive strength. I will say that the match wasn't great to start with. There were a few sloppy moments early, and John Cena should stop doing a hurricanrana as he doesn't look good doing it. However, after that the match really picked up and was very good as it built towards Cena getting the win with the big AA from the middle rope.

Paige - AJ: This was a nice follow up on the beating that Paige gave AJ last week. I like the idea that Paige would still be trying to pretend to be friends with AJ and apologize for what she did. I also like the fact that AJ didn't buy it. WWE needs to do a better job of building to their rematch (presumably at SummerSlam) than they did for their match at Battle Ground, and so far they are.

Orton Destroys Reigns: Randy Orton was great in his performance as he destroyed Roman Reigns after attacking him before Reigns' match against Kane. I really wasn't looking forward to Kane vs. Reigns, so I was fine seeing this beat down instead. It was physical and very memorable. Orton was great in the way that he was yelling at Reigns about stealing from him. I like the fact that the root of Orton's anger was the fact that Reigns took away a WWE World Title opportunity. He showed how precious that Title is to him which was great. Also, this obviously sets up Reigns to get revenge on Orton and it should build anticipation for their presumed match at SummerSlam.

Rollins vs. Jericho: The set up for this match wasn't very good (not bad enough to get a Miss, but it was too convenient that Seth Rollins was ready to attack Chris Jericho just in case Jericho interrupted The Authority), but the match itself was quite good. This was much better than Jericho's match against Bray Wyatt at Battle Ground. Rollins is so talented in the ring. He and Jericho showed good chemistry in this match. It went back and forth very nicely and featured plenty of high energy athletic wrestling action. The ending was predictable, but understandable. You want to keep Jericho and Rollins strong and you want to keep building towards Jericho vs. Wyatt at SummerSlam, so having The Wyatt Family attack Jericho at the end made sense. My only issue is a minor one which is that WWE should have the bell ring and show what happened to Rollins after the lights went out. Just show him walking away afterwards smiling with the Money in the Bank briefcase.

Stephanie - Brie Bella: I was a bit disappointed in the final segment of Raw. It was still good enough to get a marginal Hit, but it wasn't nearly as good as what Brie Bella and Stephanie McMahon were involved in last week. Stephanie was fine in her performance, but she was much better last week. Brie was good, but not great. What I liked about it is that it was cool to see a Divas segment featured in the main event slot of Raw. Yes, one of those "Divas" is the principle owner of the company, but the other is Brie Bella. And the fans were really into this segment. WWE has done a very good job of getting the fans to want to watch Brie wrestle Stephanie. On a side note, was that a "Jamie Noble!" chant to end the show? If so, that was awesome.

RAW MISSES

Sandow vs. Rose: I continue to not enjoy Damian Sandow's current gimmick with the locally inspired costumes. The astronaut outfit wasn't funny. "Apollo 13" is almost 20 years old and while it is a good movie and "Houston we have a problem" is an iconic movie line, it still feels really dated at this point. Some of Sandow's lines were ok, but it still feels like a major misuse of talent to have Sandow playing this character. I am on the fence about Adam Rose. I would like to see him actually have some longer matches to see what he can do in the ring, but it seems like WWE never lets him wrestle for more than 30 seconds.

The Cosmic Key: This was just more headache inducing crap from Goldust and Stardust. Is the Cosmic Key the Tag Team Championship? And are "they" the Usos? Or is there something else going on? And do I really care? No, not really.

Jon Mezzera is PWTorch.com's WWE Hits & Misses Specialist, providing his point of view for Raw and Smackdown each week. Email him at jmezz-torch@sbcglobal.net.

For another view from the original Hitlist author, compare Jason Powell's views to mine by visiting prowrestling.NET's "Hitlist" section here.

[Torch art credit Grant Gould (c) PWTorch.com]

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