SPOTLIGHTED PODCAST ALERT (YOUR ARTICLE BEGINS A FEW INCHES DOWN)...
Opening Segment – MISS
A recent AEW Dynamite featured a bit where World Champion MJF used a two-headed coin to “win” a coin flip to name the stipulation for his Title defense against “Hangman” Adam Page.
I felt the scene was far too cutesy and silly to be part of a main event program. It would have been ok lower down the card. I felt the same watching this opening segment. It is hard to take Seth Rollins seriously as a top star when he’s part of this multi-masked man game of three card monty. The visual was far too silly.
With Seth, L.A. Knight, and The Usos all involved with trying to take out The Vision, but only two members of The Vision left, it is far too one-sided. With The Usos getting involved in CM Punk vs. Roman Reigns, perhaps they will move on and we’ll end up getting a tag match. But, the whole thing left me cold. They still never answered what happened to Paul Heyman last week after being kidnapped by Knight.
Women’s Gauntlet – HIT
I’m not a fan of Gauntlet matches. I don’t like the concept, but this one was well booked, and had enough good wrestling action throughout with star power to carry it to a Hit, especially considering its 37 minutes length. This gauntlet was much better than the Tag Team Turmoil version of one from Smackdown last week. It started off well with the opening match between Iyo Sky and Lyra Valkyria. The fans were clearly behind Sky, despite Valkyria being a babyface also. They worked well together and put on a good match.
The next section with Raquel Rodriguez was also good, leading to both Liv Morgan and Stephanie Vaquer getting involved to continue their feud. Rodriguez was good in her attack on Sky after being eliminated to ultimately cost Sky the match as Ivy Nile would take advantage. It was a bit over the top of the announcers to talk about how smart it was to pin Sky right away at that point. What else was she going to do?
The next section was a good match between Nile and Bayley. Nile is good and had a chance to show off some here and the announcers really talked her up, despite taking the loss. Then we got another good final section with Bayley vs. Asuka which played into the growing tension between Asuka and her Kabuki Warriors partner Kairi Sane. Where is this all headed? I suspect some type of five or six team match (possibly a ladder match) for the Women’s Tag Titles at WM. Bayley is an interesting pick to face A.J. Lee for the Intercontinental Title next week. It will probably end up being more of an angle than a match to play into the tag team situation.
Penta vs. El Grande Americano (non-original version) – HIT
This is a minor Hit. I loved the passion shown by Penta in his pre-match promo about winning the IC Title last week, and brining the fans along with him on his ride. That is key to connecting with the audience as a babyface and he was very strong doing it here.
The match itself was a little disappointing. It was a good match, but I feel like these two are good enough that they should have had a very good if not great match. Even at 10 minutes, they could have had a better match. It felt a little slow at times, as if they were hesitant to kick it into a higher gear. It was a good match for Penta’s first Title defense, while also playing into Danhausen’s curse of El Grande Americano Original.
Vaquer Video – HIT
This is a good way to present Stephanie Vaquer who’s English is getting better, but she clearly is far more comfortable in her native Spanish. Having her talking in Spanish with subtitles worked well, and when she did speak in English, she came across more confident in this pre-taped video than she has talking live in front of the fans.
Her strength is her great in ring skills, but WWE is smart of find a way to work around one of her weaknesses (at least a perceived weakness). The content of the promo was also strong to build off of what Morgan has said about her in the past while showing the juxtaposition in their paths to WWE.
ARTICLE CONTINUED BELOW…
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Judgment Day – HIT
WWE has been building towards the split between Finn Balor and Dominik Mysterio, only leaving a bit of a mystery as to how JD McDonagh would react (Liv was obviously going to side with Dominik and Rodriguez was likely to side with them too). After last week, when Balor refused to help Dirty Dom cheat to keep the IC Title, the tension was going to boil over this week.
Ultimately, the entire Judgment Day sided with Dom kicking Balor out of the group. A heel group kicking out a member isn’t usually a good way to set up a babyface turn. But in this case, Balor was already strongly positioned to be a face, and he was the one who verbally put Mysterio in his place. The 4-on-1 beating was well done.
Femi vs. Rusev – MISS: I enjoyed what Oba Femi and Rusev did in this very short match, but why did it have to be only 3 minutes long? I get that they want to put Femi over strong, but that makes much more sense against Kit Wilson and The Miz in the recent squashes on Smackdown than it did here against Rusev. Rusev hasn’t been wrestling on Raw lately, so he could have gotten a bit of a boost with a longer match against Femi.
Ultimately, they should have been building Rusev up a little bit with some strong wins on Raw to make this win mean more for Femi. Give them even 6 or 7 minutes to have a better match which would still put Femi over. I wouldn’t advocate for a 10+ minute match in this case, but 3 was far too short.
Even with a 37 minute gauntlet, there was only about 50 total minutes of wrestling which is only slightly better than last week’s 47. Just have a little more wrestling. They don’t have a hard end time on Netflix. They wouldn’t have to cut anything else out to give this match 3 more minutes.
Punk – The Usos – HIT
This was a strong show-closing angle as The Usos demanded that C.M. Punk apologize for his disrespectful statement at the end of last week’s show. That line felt forced and very disrespectful coming from a babyface, but it seemed to be part of this larger story of getting Jimmy & Jey involved. All three played their parts well, with Jey the hothead and Jimmy the more level headed brother.
Punk was playing the agitator trying to continue to get under Roman Reigns’ skin, this time by going through his cousins. The way he smiled after getting punched by Jimmy suggests that this is what he wanted. He got in their heads with what he said about how Reigns has never apologized for any of the bad things that he’s done in the past. So, how will Reigns respond? And how will The Usos continue to be involved in this feud?
(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.)
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