Enough with Dominik become an Eddie Guerrero knockout, but credit to WWE for how they handled Seth injury fallout – WWE RAW HITS & MISSES (10/20)

Opening Segment – HIT:

A major injury to a top star, especially a World Champion like Seth Rollins, is going to demand hard decisions for the creative team. They had to pivot after this injury and decided to have Bron Breakker and Bronson Reed (followed by Paul Heyman) turn on Rollins last week.

This week’s show started with the follow up to that situation where Adam Pearce announced that Rollins had to have surgery and be stripped of his title.

His encounter with Breakker in particular worked very well. WWE clearly positioned this new Vision as the heels and had them move past Rollins and explain their turn on him. It all worked well.

Balor & McDonaugh vs. A.J. & Lee – HIT:

I wish WWE had done more to develop the team and relationship between A.J. Styles and Dragon Lee before this match. But, it was a very good Wrodl Tag Team Title match which led to a Title change.

The match worked within the story of The Judgment Day getting more and more annoyed with Dirty Dominik Mysterio. He was the reason this match happened in the first place, so it will be interesting to see how they all interact next week.

All four of these wrestlers are very talented workers and their skills were on display here. I’m also interested in seeing how WWE deals with Styles’s upcoming retirement next year. They are talking about it, so we’ll see how they treat it.

It is also good to see Dragon Lee away from the LWO and doing something that feels important for the first time in his WWE career.

Dominik Mysterio vs. Rusev – MISS:

I’m honestly so far beyond over the Eddie Guerrero tributes and references. I have been for a long time.

When Dominik first turned heel, he didn’t have much in terms of charisma or personality so needed to do the mock Eddie tributes to get heat. Then, as his relationship with Rhea Ripley and then Liv Morgan developed, and as he grew as an in ring talent, and as a character, he didn’t need to do things like the shoulder shimmy to get heat, but he still did which was disappointing.

Now I feel like he’s come full circle where all he does is an Eddie Guerrero rip-off gimmick. It is just a full imitation at this point. He gets cheered, so they won’t have him stop, but they still present him as a heel.

At least here he was facing another heel in Rusev, but the match didn’t work. It was Eddie-light. It ended up being more of a set up for the Rusev -enta feud than a real Intercontinental Championship match.

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Lynch vs. Dupri – MISS:

WWE followed a men’s Intercontinental Title match which ended with shenanigans and teased the champion getting counted out or disqualified, with a women’s Intercontinental Title match where the champion teased getting counted out, and then did get disqualified.

I don’t see the value in Maxxine Dupri as a wrestler and a threat to beat Becky Lynch. I don’t need to see a third match between these two. So, the DQ ending didn’t work at all.

I am also confused when they present Becky as somewhat of a babyface later in the show in her threat to Paul Heyman, but she was clearly still a heel in this match. It felt disjointed.

Kabuki Warriors Video – HIT:

This was a good way to develop the relationship between Asuka and Kairi Sane after Kairi finally went full heel (at least seemingly) against Iyo Sky and Rhea Ripley last week. These videos are always well done, and the foreign wrestlers come across so much better when they are able to speak their own language with subtitles.

Pearce – Heyman – HIT:

This was a good follow up to the opening segment with Adam Pearce telling Paul Heyman that Breakker and Reed were out of the battle royal to name C.M. Punk’s opponent at Saturday Night’s Main Event for the vacant World Title.

This was a chance for Pearce to get his power back when he wasn’t being intimidated by the actual wrestlers. That made sense. It also makes sense that he would punish them by not allowing them in the match. They shouldn’t be rewarded for injuring the former Champion.

Unfortunately, while it made perfect sense, it took out a lot of star power from that main event and made the outcome far more predictable as there were really only two potential winners in the match, one of whom was far more likely than the other. But, you could have seen Breakker or even Reed winning.

Vaquer vs. Perez – HIT:

This was a good match, which isn’t surprising considering the talent of Stephanie Vaquer and Roxanne Perez. I’m happy that Raquel Rodriguez’s role on the outside was kept to a minimum.

After the win for Vaquer, Rodriguez attacked her setting up a two-on-one situation with Nicki Bella making the save. I don’t care about her or her new friendship with Vaquer, but the story worked well enough. Hopefully Vaquer is okay after she slipped on the springboard attempt during the post-match fight.

Battle Royal – HIT:

As I said above, this was a pretty predictable battle royal. The only two possible winners were Jey Uso and less likely, L.A. Knight. But it was still fun to watch.

They told some stories and set up some feuds like Sheamus against Judgment Day. The main story was between Jimmy and Jey Uso with Jimmy saving Jey multiple times throughout the match only to get eliminated by him in the end. That was also predictable, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes, the predictable thing is predictable because it is the right thing to do.

Jey Uso vs. Punk should be good, but the story revolving around Jimmy and Roman Reigns might get convoluted and take away from the match in the end.

(Jon Mezzera is PWTorch.com’s WWE Raw Hits & Misses Specialist, providing his point of view for Raw each week. Email him at jmezz_torch@yahoo.com. Follow him on BlueSky @jonmezzera.bsky.social.)