WWE RAW HITS & MISSES 10/30: Samoa Joe returns, Asuka’s dominant win, Braun emerges, Stephanie-Angle, Miz-Hardy, Bryan

RAW HITS

Samoa Joe: Thank God for Samoa Joe. I wasn’t sure there would be a Hit on this show after the terrible start. Last week’s show was so bad that I was in a bad mood just starting out watching this week’s show. Then, this week’s show started with Stephanie McMahon and it put me in an even worse mood. I picked up when Samoa Joe’s music hit. He has been missed these past few months. Raw was very good for the most part this summer. It started getting bad in September and is now total crap. But, Joe was gone for those bad times. His presence should help, because he is over with the crowd and is very talented. I was very happy to see him back.

Miz vs. Hardy: The quality of Raw continued to be strong with the Intercontinental Championship between The Miz and Matt Hardy. WWE has done a nice job of teasing the fact that a Title may change hands between now and Survivor Series. The IC Title would make some sense given the heel vs. heel matchup that is currently scheduled. I didn’t think that Hardy would win, but there had to be some legit hope that he would among most fans. Miz and Hardy had a good match. It wasn’t great. It wasn’t very good. It wasn’t awesome, so I’m not sure why fans started a “This is Awesome” chant. But, it was good. It was a Hit.

Stacie Cullen: If you are going to be a jobber on Raw or Smackdown, this is how you do it. Stacie Cullen sold very well for Asuka. Asuka was entertaining in getting this squash and in playing to the crowd before and afterwards. After Asuka had two competitive matches with Emma who has now been released (so it was a really smart move to protect her last week), Asuka needed this squash. So, this booking decision made sense (as opposed to others that I will talk about later). But, I particularly wanted to highlight Cullen herself for the selling. I have a major pet peeve which has grown and spread over the past year or so, which is wrestlers tapping out on their opponent’s body, or their own body, instead of the mat. Some holds require them to do so as they aren’t in a position to tap out on the mat. But more and more wrestlers, and it seems like the majority of them are women for whatever reason, are tapping out on their opponent’s arm for instance when the mat is easily reached. Bayley does this a lot and it bugs me. It doesn’t look as strong. It doesn’t look like you are in as much pain when you tap out that way. Therefore, I was happy to see Cullen selling the hell out of the Asuka Lock by tapping out frantically on the mat.

Balor vs. Cesaro: This was a good match between Finn Balor and Cesaro. They are two very talented workers and they worked well together here. Sheamus played his part well on the outside getting involved to make it look like he was going to cost Balor the match. Balor was able to fight back and neutralize him (pun intended) to beat Cesaro in the end. I liked the twist on his finisher when he hit the double foot stomp on the back of Cesaro’s head instead of his chest while laying on the mat. It was good to see him get a win after last week’s head scratching decision to job him out to Kane. But, Kane destroyed him afterwards, so he didn’t really get that much momentum back.

RAW MISSES

Stephanie McMahon: As I mentioned above, I hated this opening segment. I hated last week’s show. I hated this week’s show. The problem with Raw wasn’t that the on air authority figure needed to be emasculated by Stephanie McMahon. Yes, Kurt Angle acted with more balls later in the show (although his acting was terrible), but when Stephanie was in the ring with him, he was looking like a whipped dog. Getting him to be more aggressive and show more strength with his employees (if that was the goal here) did not require him looking like a wimp in the opening segment. The Raw vs. Smackdown theme for Survivor Series was bad enough after that #UnderSiege crap last week. Having Stephanie on this week didn’t help. It is sad that WWE can’t fill out these 5 man teams without Kurt Angle and Shane McMahon, neither of whom should wrestle ever.

Jax vs. Bayley: There were some sloppy spots here and at least half of the relatively short match happened on the commercial break. Bayley should be a money act. But, she has been botched this year. WWE has been doing a decent job to rebuild her recently, but here she lost easily. I don’t understand so much of WWE’s booking decisions.

Daniel Bryan: This was not a great use of Daniel Bryan making a guest appearance on Raw. They didn’t take advantage of his popularity by having him appear in front of the live crowd. But this Miss is for Bryan’s terrible acting. He was even worse than Angle which I wasn’t sure was possible. I like how he was locked in Angle’s office with a camera person too. Last week, Smackdown were the heels. This week, Raw felt more like the heels with Stephanie’s involvement and then Kane attacking Bryan who was trying to make peace. So, who am I supposed to root for at Survivor Series? Also, did I mention how poorly Bryan acted? I mean, it was very bad.

Kane: I would not be investing this much time or capital in Kane at this point. You are sacrificing Balor and The Shield in order to build up a 50 year old Kane who hasn’t been around in months and has largely been a comedy figure, just to presumably feed him to Braun Strowman who doesn’t need it that much. He is already over. Roman Reigns’ illness was at a terrible time for the Shield reunion, but WWE is making it worse by having Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose getting destroyed by Kane. And you build up Kane as this heel monster by having him destroy Balor, Rollins and Ambrose, and then later in the show you script him to get a babyface pop for refusing to help Miz against Strowman. That makes no sense. And Kane’s whole deal is wanting to prove he is a bigger monster than Strowman, so why wouldn’t he try to help Miz?

Trick or Street Fight: Does Vince McMahon really like these matches? Does someone else on the creative team? Does anyone in the company actually think that these are good for business? The announcers didn’t try to defend the match. I was hoping that since Smackdown was actually on Halloween that WWE would skip the Halloween BS on Raw. But, I guess not. This is pure crap that makes me embarrassed to be a wrestling fan. What fan was hoping for a match like this?

James vs. Bliss: As I said last week, Mickie James didn’t do anything to deserve a second Women’s Championship match. The match itself was ok, but didn’t raise above that flat level. The Miss is really for the ending. I am not buying Alexa Bliss as being a knock out puncher. She already has at least two finishing moves. Adding a Big Show like knock out punch to her arsenal isn’t a good idea. It isn’t believable. I didn’t believe that that one punch from Bliss would knock out and defeat James like that.

Strowman Returns: This was terrible. I keep using that word. Also horrible and crap. I hate when WWE puts cameras where there wouldn’t be cameras if WWE was real. It didn’t make sense to have a camera inside of Miz’s limo, nor on the front of the limo to get a limo’s POV shot of the dump truck backing up. It made no sense why they couldn’t get the limo doors unlocked. Was the driver in on it? This was so cheesy. I have been a fan of Braun Strowman, but his reveal was so over the top and cheesy that I will find it hard to cheer for him in the future. I know that him chasing the Miz-Tourage around the ring and destroying Curtis Axel got a big pop from the live fans, but I didn’t care about anything that happened after the ultra cheesy way that Strowman popped up from the garbage heap. Has he been in the dump truck for a week? Why would you choose to travel that way? And if you are building up Kane with these stupid wins over wrestlers who should be protected to feed him to Strowman, and if Kane was the one who turned on Strowman in the first place, then why are you doing Strowman vs. Miz instead? What a crap ending for a crap episode of Raw. Oh, I used it again. Twice.

NOW CHECK OUT LAST WEEK’S COLUMN: WWE RAW HITS & MISSES 10/24: Heyman’s promo on Jinder, Under Siege, Kane beats Balor, Bliss-James feud, Alicia Fox’s antics

For another view from the original Hitlist author, compare Jason Powell’s views to mine by visiting ProWrestling.net’s “Hitlist” section HERE.

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@yahoo.com. Act now and become my 68th Twitter follower@JonMezzera (pretty clever handle right?). Just be aware that I don’t live tweet Raw, I don’t tweet much about wrestling, and I don’t tweet much at all.