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Opening Segment with Reigns and LA Knight – HIT: This was one of the better Raws in recent memory and it got off to a good start with Roman Reigns coming out to talk about beating Seth Rollins to defend the World Championship at SummerSlam. He was interrupted by LA Knight to set up his next challenger. Knight was very strong here. Again, I’m not a big fan of the current presentation of Reigns’s character. He came across like a heel for the most part on this show. Bragging about having a nicer watch than your opponent definitely screams heel to me, but I’m not convinced that’s the way WWE wants the fans to think. This wasn’t a great segment, but it was good enough based largely on Knight’s performance.
Ethan Page vs. Je’Von Evans – HIT: I greatly enjoyed this match from start to finish. It was better and longer than most of the matches on SummerSlam. Je’Von Evans is so fun to watch and so exciting in the ring, but Ethan Page is a very good wrestler in his own right. They have great chemistry too. I loved how they built off of previous matches where Page was able to counter some of Evans’ high flying offense since he had seen it before. There were a lot of little things that I liked in this match. I appreciate the fact that the referee wasn’t made to look stupid like they often are when he caught Page trying to cheat which led to the end as Evans leaped over Page and the ref to climb the ropes and hit the OG Cutter for the win.
Returns of Lynch and Vaquer – HIT: Sol Ruca vs. Roxanne Perez was a solid match. It had a few sloppy moments and a lame disqualification finish, so I can’t give it a Hit. But, it wasn’t bad enough to get a Miss either. But, it did set up the surprise returns of both Becky Lynch and Stephanie Vaquer. Lynch seems to be back in babyface mode without a turn which isn’t the best, but she should be a babyface so I won’t complain. She was great in challenging Liv Morgan and pointing out how bad her World Title reign has been so far. I wasn’t expecting a second return so quickly, so Stephanie Vaquer’s appearance at that point was also a great surprise. It will be interesting to see the dynamic between Lynch and Vaquer going forward.
Oba Feni – Bron Breakker – MISS: I know a lot of people are hyped for this and I would be too in other circumstances. The performance from Oba Femi in his promo talking about beating Brock Lesnar and being ready to lead a new generation of WWE wrestlers was strong. Bron Breakker was good in his role too getting upset at Femi’s proclamation that he’s the leader of the new generation. But, my problem is that Breakker has been playing third fiddle to Austin Theory and Maxxinne Dupri in the Vision lately. I have complained numerous times about how his talent was being wasted as part of the WWE Tag Team Champions with Theory. I know they won, but just seeing him sell to either Akira Tozawa or Otis hurt his credibility. Now, a week later I’m expected to see him as a real threat to Femi who just slayed the Beast? No, I don’t think so. He needed to be rehabilitated some before this.
ARTICLE CONTINUED BELOW…
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Gable & Penta vs. Mysterio & McDonagh – HIT: This was a good tag team match which isn’t surprising given the talent of these four wrestlers. It was good to see the Judgment Day duo moving on from Danhausen. I don’t want to see Penta as a heel, so I was relieved that he and Chad Gable are still showing respect to each other and working together despite Gable beating Penta for the Intercontinental Title. Gable can have good title defenses against both JD McDonagh and Dominik Mysterio. Hopefully Penta has a chance to move on to something new away from the IC Title at least for awhile so they can focus on some heel challengers.
Jacob Fatu vs. Royce Keys – HIT: WWE needed to do a better job over the last month or so of fully establishing the past friendship between Jacob Fatu and Royce Keys. I mean, they’ve talked about it and established that they were friends, but we needed more to make their “break up” feel like the big deal that WWE wants it to be. They did have a good street fight main event. It was physical and went back and forth nicely. Obviously, Fatu was the right pick to win the match. The post-match destruction of Keys was very well done. Keys should be out a month to sell the injuries suffered at the hands of his former friend. This definitely felt like a heel presentation for Fatu. The Usos also felt like heels in their backstage encounter with LA Knight earlier in the show. Reigns saluting what Fatu did to Keys would seem to cement him as a heel. But, he was immediately being friends with Rey Mysterio in the back and agreeing to talk to him about AAA (I do love the fact that he didn’t know that Mysterio was the AAA GM). So, I wasn’t thrilled with that bit at the very end of the show.
(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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