By Jon Mezzera, Torch Specialist

RAW HITS

Sheamus vs. Barrett: The first Money in the Bank qualifying match (though it isn't really for Money in the Bank I guess) of this week's Raw between Sheamus and Bade News Barrett was a really good match. Sheamus and Barrett have good chemistry in the ring together. They worked well together here to put on a good hard hitting physical match. There were some nice near falls as the match progressed towards the end of Sheamus picking up the victory with a surprise Brogue Kick.

The Shield Promo: After destroying 3MB (including the off camera spear of Heath Slater on the ramp), Dean Ambrose and Roman Reigns had a chance to address what Seth Rollins did at the end of last week's show. The mic work was very good from Ambrose. I loved his over the top promo about rearranging Rollins' face. I have liked Ambrose as a babyface though I feel long term his place will be as a heel. This at least showed me that he can be himself and a face at the same time. Reigns' promo wasn't as strong, but it was solid. He seemed a bit off at first, but it got stronger as it went. This is one of the longer in ring promos that he's given, even if it wasn't that long. He needs to keep getting these longer chances to talk to keep developing his skills and voice.

Bo Dallas: After an off night last week, Bo Dallas was back this week. My favorite part of his match against Xavier Woods was when he yelled to the crowd that Woods is doing his best. The pre-match promo about Daniel Bryan was better than what he did last week about the Indiana Pacers. I really like his act, but I'm not sure where it will go from this series of squash matches.

Paul Heyman's Tease: Paul Heyman has been great in continuing to remind the audience that his client Brock Lesnar conquered The Undertaker's undefeated streak at WrestleMania. I particularly enjoyed this week's effort taking advantage of being in Minnesota to tease that Lesnar was actually in the building, before switching over to introducing Cesaro. Cesaro vs. Rob Van Dam in a MITB qualifier was a solid match, but not quite good enough to get a Hit. However, the introduction of Cesaro for the match by Heyman was a definite Hit.

Seth Rollins: I liked the mic work from Seth Rollins in explaining what he did to The Shield last week. I like how he took credit for forming The Shield. His words about Ambrose and Reigns worked well. It was good how he switched from calling them his brothers to calling them his business associates. It makes sense for him to start using that type of Triple H corporate speak in terms of doing what was best for business for himself. The line about buying into the evolution of Seth Rollins was also strong. This was well written and well performed by Rollins. I still don't like breaking up The Shield. But, WWE did a nice job following up on the break up this week with these strong promos.

Alicia Fox: Alicia Fox has become my favorite Diva. I thoroughly enjoy her antics after losing matches. She has been performing pretty well in the ring as well in her solid matches against WWE Divas Champion Paige. But, the real highlight is Fox's fits that she throws like this week when she started eating popcorn and forcing her "friend" Aksana to eat it too and then playing nice afterwards. She has that off balanced performance down well. My complaint is that more attention should be paid to Paige's character development than Fox. They can do both at the same time. The fans who never watched NXT don't really know anything about her character. She also is such a good wrestler, I don't understand why WWE isn't allowing her to show more of those skills.

RAW MISSES

Daniel Bryan Title Situation: I was not a fan of the opening segment for this week's Raw. I have not liked the writing for most of this storyline. I like the fact that this is definitive. But, it really should have happened a few weeks ago. A big part of my problem with this angle is that The Authority seems way too reasonable here. All along they have said that the WWE World Title should be defended and that Daniel Bryan can't defend it. There is precedent to strip a Champion of the Title due to injury. It has happened multiple times with various titles (I think Batista in 2009 was the most recent for the WWE Title). Bryan should have done the right thing and given up the Title when he had neck surgery. The Authority seemed to be doing the right thing this week. The only criticism against them from Michael Cole was that they didn't do it to Bryan's face. That's not a very strong statement. Also, if he was never notified about being stripped of the Title, how did they have the two Title belts? That made no sense. So, this whole segment was the culmination of a poor angle.

John Cena to the Rescue: There really isn't anyone else on the roster who would have made sense to come to The Shield's aid to be their partner against The Wyatt Family other than John Cena, so I get why WWE did this. My disappointment comes from the fact that Payback should have been the end of the Cena vs. Bray Wyatt feud. So, I wasn't a fan of seeing it continue here. Cena got his revenge on Wyatt at the PPV. Why did he need to be involved again? I can appreciate the fact that as the top babyface he was doing the right thing. However, The Authority had brought up earlier in the night how The Shield had taken out so many Superstars and Cena was one of them. What could have worked to save this situation was a Renee Young interview with Cena explaining why he come to their aid. The announcers tried to explain it by saying he was fighting The Wyatts, not helping The Shield. But, on a three plus hour show, it is ridiculous that their top star couldn't get some mic time to explain his actions and help hype a main event. That would have been much better than the random scene with Vickie Guerrero and The Authority which was totally meaningless and didn't accomplish anything.

Cena & The Shield vs. The Wyatt Family: To me, the main event six man tag match really dragged. At over 20 minutes it felt too long. There was no variety in the match. It quickly settled into a very prolonged beat down of Ambrose leading to an eventual hot tag to Cena. After cleaning house, the match once again settled down into a prolonged beat down of Cena leading to a hot tag of Reigns. It was a very basic tag match formula which these six wrestlers didn't stray from at all. Cena certainly didn't work was well as Rollins did with Ambrose and Reigns. This is the problem with breaking up The Shield. This didn't come close to the quality of the matches that we've seen between The Shield and The Wyatts in the past. I'm not knocking the effort of the wrestlers here, but how the match was put together. It did get better at the end, and had a fun final few minutes, but it was too late to save the otherwise dull repetitive match.

Jon Mezzera is PWTorch.com's WWE Hits & Misses Specialist, providing his point of view for Raw and Smackdown each week. Email him at jmezz-torch@sbcglobal.net.

For another view from the original Hitlist author, compare Jason Powell's views to mine by visiting prowrestling.NET's "Hitlist" section here.

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