WWE RAW HITS & MISSES (3/2): Were there actually more commercials? Why did Punk bring up Roman’s dead father? Did anyone track down LA Knight after he kidnapped Heyman? Did WWE get Danhausen right?

Opening Segment – HIT: Raw got off to a hot start with The Vision coming out to talk about how Seth Rollins had screwed Logan Paul at Elimination Chamber. The Vision is weak right now due to the injuries to Bron Breakker and Bronson Reed. WWE has had to change WrestleMania plans because of those injuries. Seth Rollins will be in a match against someone from The Vision. Right now it appears to be Logan Paul unless Breakker is back by then. I’m not sure about the direction and Rollins works better as a heel to me than a babyface. But, they are doing a good job with this story despite the injuries and change of plans. The use of the masked men has worked well. Rollins beating up Paul Heyman worked. Props to Heyman for taking that bump and bleeding from the nose. My only question is what happened after he was kidnapped by L.A. Knight? They didn’t really address that situation for the rest of the show.

Gunther vs. Lee – HIT: I wish we had seem more of this match, because what we did see was great. Dragon Lee jumped Gunther before the match started which fit in perfectly with this story. Even though the show had just come back from a commercial break, it jumped to another commercial right away. Then, there was another commercial during the match. So we didn’t see enough of it. But, it was fun to watch when we could. Gunther was dominant as you’d expect, but Lee got in enough hope spots to keep the match interesting. He even had a good run at the end with some nice near falls. The way Gunther ripped off his mask while putting him in the sleeper was a strong ending. I’m assuming Rey Mysterio will face Gunther at WM after this.

Theory vs. Uso – MISS: The Vision storyline is convoluted right now despite the strong opening segment. Knight is still involved as are the Usos who think The Vision were responsible for taking Jey out before Smackdown. Jimmy was attempting to get revenge for that attack here against Austin Theory. On a show with only four matches, it was disappointing that one of them went under three minutes and ended in a disqualification. It was also odd that Jey showed up with crutches which he didn’t appear to actually need. This step in the story felt like it came a week too early. We could have seen him on crutches this week to return healthier next week. This was rushed. Will we find out who attacked Jey? Will we ever find out who attacked Jacob Fatu? Who will the Usos defend the Tag Team Titles against at WM? There’s a lot of questions, and I’m not sure WWE will end up with good answers.

Danhausen – HIT: I was not a big fan of Danhausen in AEW (wasn’t familiar with him before that). I didn’t hate him or anything, but was mostly indifferent to his humor (Hit or Miss). His debut at EC was underwhelming. I didn’t have an issue with him being in the mystery crate. For some reason, there were a lot of fans expecting it to be something serious and important in the crate despite how WWE had presented the mystery with lower card humor in the buildup involving Johnny Gargano and R-Truth. I mean, the two GMs didn’t want anything to do with it, so why would fans expect it to be something serious or important? The problem was that the actual introduction of Danhausen left a lot to be desired. His appearance on Raw was much better to give new fans a taste of what he’s all about. He was pretty funny with his list of demands and the way he interacted with Judgment Day. His first curse seemed to work.

ARTICLE CONTINUED BELOW…

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Mysterio vs. Penta – HIT: This was a good match with Penta beating Dominik Mysterio to become the new Intercontinental Champion. There has been a lot of speculation that Dominik would end up defending the IC Title against Finn Balor at WM. Now they might face in a grudge match which would be okay. I hope Penta holds onto the IC Title for awhile. This match had good wrestling action and fit in perfectly with the story they are telling with Dominik and Balor.

Reigns – Punk: HIT: With one major caveat, I once again enjoyed the verbal encounter between C.M. Punk and Roman Reigns. They were serious and intense. They both got in good lines against each other. While I’m not a fan of insider language, I was intrigued by the way Roman kept referring to “we” as he talked about Punk being back in WWE. Who is “we”? Punk seemed to question that as well, but in a dismissive way. Perhaps he shouldn’t be so dismissive of it. At some point, they will need to delve a little deeper and tease more physicality between the two. We can’t have this segment over and over again for several weeks leading up to WM. My issue with the segment was with the final line from Punk when he said he was going to bury Reigns next to his father. That came out of nowhere and was overly harsh. It was disrespectful to a wrestling legend and to family members who otherwise might be on Punk’s side. Is he trying to reunite The Bloodline? Maybe there is a plan for that line, but it didn’t work.

Not Enough Wrestling – MISS: I was originally going to say “Too Many Commercials” as that was a strong feeling coming out of the PLE on Saturday which continued on this Raw. But, it is more than that. I can deal with the commercials if there is more action. But we only had four matches on this show which totaled about 45 minutes (and we didn’t see all of that time – we saw about 30 of those minutes with five three-minute commercials interrupting those four matches). This show had 12 commercial breaks. I was curious about that number so I randomly picked an episode from last May which also had 12. That surprised me. But it had 67 minutes of wrestling action so it probably didn’t feel as bad in the moment. Another random check from an episode in March had only 10. With the long commercials and only four matches at EC, with lots of other filler, we didn’t get much wrestling for our money. WWE is going to face increasingly difficult times selling tickets with such high prices if they don’t make the shows worthwhile. There’s no way I would pay to see a WWE show right now.

(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.)