Instant Reaction - WWE Raw 6/9
By Benjamin Tucker, PWTorch TV specialist

Overall Score - 5.0

Monday Night Raw is in a state of transition and it couldn't be more boring. WWE continues to focus solely on the upper card, but as main event talents leave (Punk), get injured (Bryan), or lose any shred of credibility they may have once had (Orton), a problem arises. Without any focus on the mid-card, there aren't any potential new main-eventers to draw from. This problem is making Raw increasingly difficult to watch, as the upper tier talent pool continues to shrink and mid-carders lacking credibility take up more and more TV time while not actually moving up the card.

What this has resulted in are repetitive, boring Raws that sound much better in terms of individual segments than they are in totality. A Bo Dallas squash isn't watchable if it's surrounded by other low-card filler.

Think about it like this. Every single match on this show was either a squash or a re-match of some sort. Even the main event was a repeat of the three or four Shield-Wyatt matches we've seen over the last four months, just with one of the six men replaced with John Cena. That's nine matches of emptiness and fast-forwarding. Even the verbal segments were repetitious as the Shield and Wyatts were on TV twice before the main event.

Is Raw bad? No. But I'll claw my eyes out if the shows don't start to improve from this lackadaisical effort. There's nothing happening 85 percent of the show, and the 15 percent of interest tonight wasn't enough to make Raw as a whole worth catching.

What to Watch:

- The opening segment with the Authority was straight and to the point on the Bryan title situation, and I thought it was well-executed. The two heels have been great as of late, and this was no different.

- Wade Barrett vs. Sheamus was far and away the best match of the show, with the main event coming in second. Barrett and Sheamus are fantastic when working together, and tonight they strung together nearfalls particularly well.

- The more ridiculous Rusev's gimmick gets, the more I begin to like him. The Russian sympathizer character isn't overtly goofy, but it does give him a great hook. Putin's album of photos was one of the highlights of the show.

- Finally, take the time to find Dean Ambrose's promo on Seth Rollins. It was every bit as sick, twisted, and amazing as you would expect from an Ambrose promo. His unique cadence makes him stand out really well in today's WWE.

But that's it. These are the highlights of a three hour-plus program. Something has to give eventually. WWE can't avoid their mid-card woes forever...

Questions? Comments? Reactions? Find me on Twitter @BTuckerTorch, where I talk about wrestling and... stuff!

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