WWE RAW HITS & MISSES (7/13): Oba Femi opening promo, Iyo Sky vs. Raquel Rodriguez, IC Title shot Gauntlet, Bloodline six-man set-up, The Vision, Bayley-Lyra exchange

Oba Femi – HIT: The bit at the start of the opening segment with Paul Heyman and Brock Lesnar talking about the restraining order against Oba Femi wasn’t great. I like what Heyman was trying to do in implying the fact that Lesnar is just as obsessed with destroying Femi as Femi is obsessed with destroying Lesnar. The bit about the restraining order and the fake cops was lame. But, Femi’s promo after he destroyed the cops was very strong. He explained why he challenged Lesnar instead of one of the champions after winning King of the Ring. That should have come a few weeks ago, but better late than never. I would rather WWE realize they made a mistake and try to fix it than just ignore it. The fire shown by Femi was so memorable; it really carried the opening segment. I also liked how they addressed the lame part of the opening segment later in the show by establishing that Heyman was bluffing and using fake cops.

Sky vs. Rodriguez – HIT: This was a good match between Iyo Sky and Roxanne Perez. It fit in nicely with the ongoing feud between Sky and Liv Morgan over the World Title. Sky was able to overcome the attempts at interference from Perez’s Judgment Day partners, but the heel trio got the best of her after the match. Sol Ruca’s save continues her issues with the group as well, which presumably will lead to another Intercontinental Title defense.

Vision – Alpha Academy- MISS: I can’t bring myself to care about these losers Akira Tozawa and Otis. Austin Theory is a loser too. So is Maxxine Dupri. I don’t care about this story at all. It is a weak use of the WWE Tag Team Titles. I don’t understand why The Street Profits weren’t on to address losing the titles last week. The Vision needs to disband. This is a waste of Bron Breakker, and that’s coming from someone who has felt that Breakker is overrated. He’s better than this and should be pushed more, especially when there aren’t any top heels on Raw.

Bloodline / Other Team – MISS: There were parts of this that I liked, but it was still a Miss. The impromptu match starting during a commercial break was weak. Royce Keys vs. Jimmy Uso was a bad match on Smackdown, so running it back on Raw was a choice. What we saw of the match was better than the first one, so that’s something, but it ended with a lame disqualification. The tease of Solo Sikoa re-joining the Bloodline was okay, but I’m not into Sikoa as a babyface. LA Knight was fine in his save and promo challenging the Usos & Jacob Fatu for a six-man tag at SummerSlam. It should be a good enough match, but it is still hard to tell if this is face vs. face, or if the Bloodline are supposed to be heels.

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Bayley – Valkryia – HIT: This was another good step in the feud between former partners Lyra Valkyria and Bayley. I love how Valkyria is now playing the unhinged, possibly crazy character which parallels how Bayley was at the start of their friendship. They’ve switched places. I loved Michael Cole comparing Valkyria’s look to the sea hag on “Widow’s Bay.” That was an actual good current pop culture reference. Their performances were both strong. I am looking forward to seeing their match at Saturday Night’s Main Event.

Gauntlet – HIT: I am not a huge fan of Gauntlet matches, even though they often feature plenty of good wrestling action. This one was well booked with the exception of Danhausen’s involvement in distracting Dominik Mysterio to cost him against Je’von Evans in the second leg of the gauntlet. The timing on a lot of that and the production of it was way off, so maybe the problem was more the execution than the booking. Either way, the gauntlet got much better as it proceeded as Evans became the central driving force of the action as he beat Mysterio, and then had a great segment against Dragon Lee. That was a lot of fun and the crowd was super-hyped for it. Evans vs. Rusev was also very good. The teases of Evans escaping the Accolade only eventually pass out were very well done. Evans was the star here. Chad Gable didn’t get as strong a reaction, but he got a pretty good one. He had two good segments, overcoming the odds to beat both Rusev and Ethan Page to get the win to become the no. 1 contender to Penta’s Intercontinental Title. That should be a great match at SummerSlam, but it is another face vs. face matchup.

Reigns – Rollins – HIT: This segment went on a little too long and some of the lines didn’t land as strongly as others. Seth Rollins shouldn’t have started doing his catch phrases at the end. But the mic work from Roman Reigns was very strong, and Rollins was good enough to get this closing segment a Hit despite the length and a few flaws. They played into their history without going overboard with the meta language that Rollins used too much last week. The physicality at the end worked well also.

(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.)