{"id":59029,"date":"2018-04-27T00:11:11","date_gmt":"2018-04-27T05:11:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/?p=59029"},"modified":"2018-04-27T00:11:11","modified_gmt":"2018-04-27T05:11:11","slug":"wwe-raw-hits-misses-4-23-bruno-sammartino-tribute-sami-kevin-show-lesnar-reigns-hype-elias-vs-roode-miztourage-pitches-no-way-jose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/2018\/04\/27\/wwe-raw-hits-misses-4-23-bruno-sammartino-tribute-sami-kevin-show-lesnar-reigns-hype-elias-vs-roode-miztourage-pitches-no-way-jose\/","title":{"rendered":"WWE RAW HITS &#038; MISSES 4\/23: Bruno Sammartino tribute, Sami &#038; Kevin Show, Lesnar-Reigns hype, Elias vs. Roode, Miztourage pitches, No Way Jose"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"pwtor-1993836840\" class=\"pwtor-before-content pwtor-entity-placement\"><hr \/><b>SPOTLIGHTED PODCAST ALERT (YOUR ARTICLE BEGINS A FEW INCHES DOWN)... <\/b>\r\n\r\n<iframe src=\"https:\/\/widget.spreaker.com\/player?show_id=3076978&theme=light&playlist=false&playlist-continuous=false&autoplay=false&live-autoplay=false&chapters-image=true&episode_image_position=right&hide-logo=false&hide-likes=false&hide-comments=false&hide-sharing=false&hide-download=true\" width=\"100%\" height=\"140px\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe>\r\n<hr \/><\/div><h3><b><u>RAW HITS<\/u><\/b><\/h3>\n<p><b>Bruno Sammartino Tribute:<\/b>\u00a0 WWE started off Raw with a very nice tribute to Bruno Sammartino who passed away last week.\u00a0 In addition to the 10 bell salute with the entire roster on the stage, they had a rather long video highlighting his life and career.\u00a0 It was nicely done and a classy way to start off Raw this week.\u00a0 And they continued to pay tribute to him with tweets from wrestlers and celebrities throughout the show.<\/p>\n<p><b>Elias vs. Roode:<\/b>\u00a0 This was a good match.\u00a0 I was surprised that they gave the win to Elias over Bobby Roode who has just come over from Smackdown as part of the Superstar Shakeup.\u00a0 But, I am higher on Elias as an act right now than the one note Glorious Bobby Roode.\u00a0 So, I am ok with the ending.\u00a0 I assume it sets up Roode to get a win back next week which is part of WWE&#8217;s stupid 50-50 booking.\u00a0 Roode is so miscast as a babyface and Elias could be a strong babyface.\u00a0 So, perhaps this feud could turn them both and be a boon to both of their careers.<\/p>\n<p><b>The Miztourage:<\/b>\u00a0 I enjoyed watching Bo Dallas and Curtis Axel trying to join up with Seth Rollins as part of a new Shield and then Finn Balor as part of a new Balor Club.\u00a0 These were fun scenes which played into all six of their personalities well.\u00a0 They set up their tag match which was fun.\u00a0 I was hoping to see something more between Rollins and Balor in terms of setting up their Intercontinental Title ladder match for Saudi Arabia.\u00a0 But, I am curious to see more from the Miztourage without The Miz and to see where WWE goes with them.<\/p>\n<p><b>Drew McIntyre:<\/b>\u00a0 After Dolph Ziggler &amp; Drew McIntyre vs. Titus Worldwide, Ziggler did some yelling and then McIntyre cut a very good promo.\u00a0 He was a strong babyface in NXT, but he certainly can be a strong heel on Raw and so far he is off to a good start.\u00a0 Unfortunately, right after he cut this promo, Ziggler got the mic again and started yelling.\u00a0 Then he gave that terrible line about not stealing the show because they are the show.\u00a0 I hope that The Show is not the name of their team.\u00a0 That&#8217;s terrible.\u00a0 The line is also far too reminiscent of the iconic &#8220;I am the Game&#8221; interview with Triple H and the much more recent &#8220;we don&#8217;t just set the bar&#8230; We are the Bar!&#8221; line.\u00a0 As I feared last week, Ziggler looks like he is going to bring McIntyre down.<\/p>\n<p><b>Strowman &amp; Lashley vs. Owens &amp; Zayn:<\/b>\u00a0 Braun Strowman running over Kevin Owens on the outside of the ring towards the end of the match was perhaps my favorite WWE moment so far in 2018.\u00a0 That was great from both Strowman and Owens.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t see a future in Strowman and Bobby Lashley as a team.\u00a0 They are too similar and too valuable as singles acts.\u00a0 But, an occasional tag match like this works fine.\u00a0 They both performed well in this match.\u00a0 So did Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens.\u00a0 Of course, Zayn and Owens should be pushed as top heels on Raw.\u00a0 I&#8217;m not sure who the top heel is supposed to be.\u00a0 So, they shouldn&#8217;t do too many jobs like this.\u00a0 Also, Lashley at some point needs to talk.\u00a0 They need to do a better job of reintroducing him to the WWE audience and help him connect beyond his athleticism.\u00a0 So, hopefully that comes soon.<\/p>\n<p><b>A Moment of Bliss:<\/b>\u00a0 Alexa Bliss was great in her faux public service announcement denouncing the so called bullying by Nia Jax.\u00a0 Her story about Jax stealing food from an old homeless woman was hilarious.\u00a0 Her fake sadness and shame at not stepping in and doing something at the time was also great.\u00a0 It makes you want to see Jax get her hands on Bliss, even though she won the Championship at WrestleMania.<\/p>\n<p><b>Natalya, James, Rousey:<\/b>\u00a0 Raw had a strong ending after a lackluster main event (more later).\u00a0 I liked the nastiness that Mickie James showed towards Natalya at the end of the match taking advantage of her injured leg.\u00a0 This was a great heel move for James and it worked nicely as a set up Rounda Rousey coming to Natalya&#8217;s aid.\u00a0 Their friendship was well established last week, so this made sense.\u00a0 I assumed it would quickly lead to Natalya turning on Rousey and setting up Rousey&#8217;s first singles match.\u00a0 That still may happen, but if WWE doesn&#8217;t think she&#8217;s quite ready for a singles match on a big stage yet, a tag match with her and Natalya against James &amp; Bliss might work.<\/p>\n<h3><b><u>RAW MISSES<\/u><\/b><\/h3>\n<p><b>Heyman, Lesnar, and Reigns:<\/b>\u00a0 This didn&#8217;t do anything for me.\u00a0 Paul Heyman did the best that he could under poor circumstances to try to position Brock Lesnar as a heel and make the fans want to see Roman Reigns defeat him for the Universal Title.\u00a0 The problem is that the feud isn&#8217;t working, so his promo didn&#8217;t work.\u00a0 It sounded exactly like every promo that he cut leading up to their match at WrestleMania.\u00a0 There wasn&#8217;t anything new.\u00a0 They are giving a Title match to Reigns that he didn&#8217;t earn.\u00a0 This is not a match that I have interest in seeing at this point, even in a steel cage.\u00a0 Reigns wasn&#8217;t any better.\u00a0 He has been so uninspired since WM.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t really know where WWE is going with this, and I don&#8217;t care that much at this point which is the problem.<\/p><div id=\"pwtor-3716523642\" class=\"pwtor-content pwtor-entity-placement\"><div align=\"center\" data-freestar-ad=\"__336x280 __336x280\" id=\"pwtorchcom_test_300x250\">\r\n  <script data-cfasync=\"false\" type=\"text\/javascript\">\r\n    freestar.config.enabled_slots.push({ placementName: \"pwtorchcom_test_300x250\", slotId: \"pwtorchcom_test_300x250\" });\r\n  <\/script>\r\n<\/div><\/div>\n<p><b>The Sami &amp; Kevin Show:<\/b>\u00a0 I wanted to like this.\u00a0 I really did.\u00a0 I am a huge fan of Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn and have enjoyed their heel antics as of late, even when they aren&#8217;t part of a strong storyline.\u00a0 The idea that they would have a talk show together was appealing.\u00a0 But, this didn&#8217;t work.\u00a0 I hope it will work in the future.\u00a0 Here, most of the jokes fell flat.\u00a0 It was far from their best work.\u00a0 They did have a few good lines and Kurt Angle was ok, but he didn&#8217;t do much to elevate the segment either.\u00a0 I did appreciate how he hyped the Greatest Royal Rumble by listing several wrestlers like Daniel Bryan and Chris Jericho who have strong reasons to want to beat up Owens and Zayn and would be in the match with them.\u00a0 It also gave Angle a chance to announce the Owens &amp; Zayn vs. Lashley &amp; Strowman match.\u00a0 But, otherwise it was disappointing.<\/p>\n<p><b>Mahal vs. Gable:<\/b>\u00a0 Let me start by saying that I enjoyed the set up for this match.\u00a0 Jindar Mahal was actually good in making fun of Chad Gable.\u00a0 The line where he got him confused with the 10 year old Nikolas from WM was great.\u00a0 This is a better character (along with his entitled to a limousine bit from last week), than the generic anti-America gimmick he&#8217;s had.\u00a0 I&#8217;d go away from that and more towards this presentation.\u00a0 And both Mahal and Gable performed well in their match.\u00a0 That is a lot of praise for a Miss.\u00a0 I will call it a minor Miss due to how the match was booked.\u00a0 It wasn&#8217;t the effort from the wrestlers.\u00a0 It was the fact that it was basically a 9 minute squash match with a sudden surprise victory for Gable in the end.\u00a0 It was so predictable.\u00a0 WWE wouldn&#8217;t have Mahal dominate a match for 9 minutes like that and get the win.\u00a0 Strong wins like that only last maybe 4 minutes.\u00a0 If Gable had gotten in more offense throughout the match, even with Mahal controlling the majority of it, it would have been better.\u00a0 Or make the match shorter.\u00a0 WWE telegraphs the ending of their matches like this when they follow the same formulas over and over again.\u00a0 The wrestler who dominates most of the match like this always gets the loss.<\/p>\n<p><b>No Way Jose:<\/b>\u00a0 No Way Jose is being presented by WWE as the new Adam Rose.\u00a0 That is a bad thing.\u00a0 I can understand Michael Cole and Corey Graves being shocked when Booker T pointed it out.\u00a0 I can only imagine Vince McMahon&#8217;s head exploding.\u00a0 But, Booker was right.\u00a0 From a &#8220;best for business&#8221; stand point, he shouldn&#8217;t have said it.\u00a0 But, I liked that he did as it was what a lot of fans including me were thinking.\u00a0 I particularly liked how Cole and Graves&#8217; defense of Jose over Rose is that this is a conga line without a bunny.\u00a0 Jose deserves better than this.\u00a0 He can be a fun character, without the conga line, who has fun (without Cole reminding the audience that he just likes to have fun), while also being serious when he needs to be.\u00a0 He got serious at times in NXT and it worked fine.\u00a0 The scripting with Baron Corbin refusing to wrestle Jose only to attack him later was fine.\u00a0 But, it points to a bigger issue which I keep harping on.\u00a0 When you switch several wrestlers like Corbin from Smackdown to Raw at the same time as you call up several wrestlers like Jose from NXT, then you get situations where Corbin and Jose both need to be established on Raw, but they can&#8217;t do that well when they are facing off against each other.<\/p>\n<p><b>Main Event:<\/b>\u00a0 I like the idea of having the 10 woman tag match as the main event, but it didn&#8217;t deliver.\u00a0 The women&#8217;s division on Raw isn&#8217;t that strong right now.\u00a0 The five heels in this match were Bliss, Mickie James and the three members of The Riott Squad.\u00a0 Bliss is great on the mic and solid in the ring, but not a great worker.\u00a0 Mickie James is great all around, but is being used as an enhancement talent at this point in her career.\u00a0 The Riott Squad are not good.\u00a0 Ruby Riott is the best of the trio, but none of them were ready to be called up when they were last year, and I don&#8217;t see that they&#8217;ve improved much since then.\u00a0 On the babyface side, Jax is good all around, but like Bliss, she isn&#8217;t great in the ring.\u00a0 Bayley and Sasha Banks are great in the ring, but have been stuck in a terrible storyline for months now.\u00a0 Natalya is a good worker and all around performer, but suited more as a heel than a babyface.\u00a0 Ember Moon has potential to have a great run on the main roster.\u00a0 So, while there is a lot of talent here, much of it isn&#8217;t being well utilized at that moment.\u00a0 And the match was flat and boring.\u00a0 It wasn&#8217;t anything special, and it wasn&#8217;t fun to watch.\u00a0 Even the big spot at the end with Jax jumping off the ring apron through the other women felt forced.\u00a0 The ones in the back like Bayley barely took any impact from it, yet they had to lay there and sell it for the rest of the show as if they were knocked out.\u00a0 The end of the show was strong, but it followed a disappointing main event.<\/p>\n<p>For another view from the original Hitlist author, compare Jason Powell\u2019s views to mine by visiting prowrestling.NET\u2019s \u201cHitlist\u201d section <a href=\"https:\/\/prowrestling.net\/site\/category\/viewpoints\/jasonpowell\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><em>Jon Mezzera is PWTorch.com\u2019s WWE Hits &amp; Misses Specialist, providing his point of view for Raw and Smackdown each week. Email him at jmezz_torch@yahoo.com. Follow him on Twitter <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/jonmezzera\">@JonMezzera<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>NOW CHECK OUT LAST WEEK&#8217;S COLUMN:\u00a0<\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/2018\/04\/18\/wwe-raw-hits-misses-4-16-miz-tv-superstar-shake-up-rousey-natalya-moon-vs-mickie-riott-squad-the-bar-mcintyre-joe-reigns\/\">WWE RAW HITS &amp; MISSES 4\/16: Miz TV, Superstar Shake-up, Rousey-Natalya, Moon vs. Mickie, Riott Squad, The Bar, McIntyre, Joe-Reigns<\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"pwtor-end-article-groups pwtor-entity-placement\" id=\"pwtor-3531102069\"><div id=\"pwtor-3597868730\"><div align=\"center\" data-freestar-ad=\"__336x280\" id=\"pwtorchcom_medrec_3\">\r\n  <script data-cfasync=\"false\" type=\"text\/javascript\">\r\n    freestar.config.enabled_slots.push({ placementName: \"pwtorchcom_medrec_3\", slotId: \"pwtorchcom_medrec_3\" });\r\n  <\/script>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\nTHANK YOU FOR VISITING<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\"><p>RAW HITS Bruno Sammartino Tribute:\u00a0 WWE started off Raw with a very nice tribute to Bruno Sammartino who passed away last week.\u00a0 In addition to the 10 bell salute with the entire roster on the <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/2018\/04\/27\/wwe-raw-hits-misses-4-23-bruno-sammartino-tribute-sami-kevin-show-lesnar-reigns-hype-elias-vs-roode-miztourage-pitches-no-way-jose\/\" title=\"WWE RAW HITS &#038; MISSES 4\/23: Bruno Sammartino tribute, Sami &#038; Kevin Show, Lesnar-Reigns hype, Elias vs. Roode, Miztourage pitches, No Way Jose\">[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33536,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,28,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opnionandanalysis","category-specialists_hitsandmisses","category-specialists"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/GallowayDrew_3x2Charlton.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59029"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59029\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59035,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59029\/revisions\/59035"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}