By Jon Mezzera, PWTorch Specialist

RAW HITS

None: This show sucked.

RAW MISSES

Opening Segment: I was shocked last week when WWE decided that barely a month after removing The Authority from power, that they would bring them back. I don't understand the decision. It ruined the Survivor Series main event. It ruined their ability to sell future major stipulations when the fans know that the stipulation can be overturned a month later. It ruined Sting's WWE debut. And it ultimately led to opening segments like this with the babyfaces hanging their heads in the ring, being totally emasculated at the expense of the McMahon family. Why do I want to cheer for these sad sacks? This felt like I was watching a rerun of a bad show that I didn't like watching in the first place. I'm not sure what to think about Seth Rollins being added to the Royal Rumble main event which will now be a triple threat match. I don't really want to see another regular match between Brock Lesnar and John Cena. And Rollins certainly can add energy and athleticism to what would otherwise be a slow match. However, I'm not really looking forward to a triple threat match. And shouldn't the announcers bring up the fact that Lesnar and Paul Heyman would be very upset about Rollins being added to the match? I'm guessing they will be on to address this next week which is fine. But, the announcers should have asked about it to set up their response. Unfortunately, the announcers were very bad this week (much more later).

Bad News Barrett: Wasn't this guy a babyface last week? I mean he was playing to the crowd and facing the clearly heel Cesaro. But one week later, he is back to being a heel. If he had come back as a heel last week, then I wouldn't have had a problem with how he attacked Dolph Ziggler after their very short Intercontinental Title match. That could have set up a good feud over the Title moving forward. But, shortly thereafter came the rerun of the Director of Operations Kane coming out and changing the match afterwards to a two-out-of-three falls match. It was also good to see that after seven IC Title changes in 2014, that they started off 2015 with another. Yeah!

Reigns is Superman: WWE shouldn't be trying to replace John Cena with another Superman type character like Roman Reigns after all of the SuperCena complaints from the fans over the last decade. WWE could do a lot better job of presenting Reigns in a way where he doesn't get negative comparisons to Cena. One of those ways is to actually present him as a cool person. I have heard that he is a cool person in real life. So, don't script him so heavily. Let him be himself. Certainly don't script him to quote the old cliched lines about Superman that have been around for like 80 years. Cool people don't do that.

The Announcers: So, the Ascension are heels for comparing themselves to Demolition and The Road Warriors, especially in a way that puts The Road Warriors down. That works. But, John Bradshaw Layfield is the heel commentator who was outraged at what The Ascension said. Can't we get some consistency from the announcers? Booker T wasn't good. He sleep walked his way through the night filling in for Jerry Lawler. There were times when he and Michael Cole did a nice job of questioning The Authority's decisions. However, they did not do nearly enough to express outrage at how unfair they were being towards Ziggler and Ryback when Kane changed their matches at the last minute. When Kane put himself into the Ryback vs. Seth Rollins match, Booker T initially did a nice job of saying that this was clearly Kane following The Authority's orders. A minute later he was saying that he didn't want to speculate, and maybe it was just Kane going into business for himself. What? Have some conviction. As a fill in, Booker had a chance to really lay it on strong against The Authority. He could even say "hey, I'm not coming back next week anyway, so I'm going to speak my mind." Instead, he was wishy washy like Lawler and Cole were every week during the first Authority run in power for much of last year. All three of them did piss poor jobs this week.

Reigns vs. Big Show: This was a boring match. Watching The Big Show dominate Reigns for much of the match certainly didn't make Reigns look like the next big thing. I certainly hope the plan is not to have Reigns win The Royal Rumble to set him up against Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania (for multiple reasons). If that is the plan, then don't have him look so weak against Show. Yes, he got the final word in with the spear after the match, but that was too little too late. I'm not saying he should dominate the match, but an actual competitive back-and-forth match would have been better than this.

The Divas: I continue to be against bringing "Total Divas" storylines onto Raw or Smackdown. Last August, Paige played a prank on Natalya, which five months later aired on E! and then found its way onto Raw the next night. It makes no sense. Paige is a heel. Why was she siding with Natalya here? It makes no sense. Writing WWE storylines around which Divas are or are not cast members of "Total Divas" is a mistake. And if you are going to do it, at least have it make sense. Why would Alicia Fox attack Naomi? Fox should be happy that she is now on the cast. If she had been removed from the cast, then I could understand her being upset. Again, it makes no sense.

Ambulance Match: If the point of an Ambulance Match is to destroy your opponents so they have to be taken out of the arena in an ambulance, and if you have an Ambulance Match between two wrestlers who absolutely hate each other and want to absolutely destroy each other like Dean Ambrose and Bray Wyatt, then you probably shouldn't have those two wrestlers try to win very quickly. Ambrose tried to throw Wyatt into the ambulance almost right away without doing much damage to him. Now, if you are just trying to win the match, that makes sense. But after all the talk in their back stage promos earlier in the show, shouldn't Ambrose have been concentrating on doing much more damage to Wyatt before trying to win the match? The way the opening minutes of the match were booked didn't fit into their feud. Also, we have seen too many of these types of matches between these two over the past month. I've already seen Ambrose leaping off of something high to put Wyatt through a table enough that it had no impact on me. That was supposed to be a huge moment. Instead, it was sort of a yawn moment. And then you had more announcing problems with them talking more about what a great performance it was from Ambrose and Wyatt than talking about it being the end to a huge feud.

Babyface Firings: Just like Raw started off with dejected babyfaces acting sad, it ended the same exact way with The Authority firing Ryback, Ziggler and Erick Rowan. Again, it is more of the same. It didn't make me want to see what happens next. They are obviously going to get their jobs back, but I don't look forward to seeing the journey to get those jobs back. I don't want to see any of them turn heel to make a deal with The Authority to take out John Cena. It would be too much like what Big Show did at SurvivorSeries, and too soon of a heel turn for Ryback and Rowan in particular. This show was too heavy handed and heel-centric without even a glimmer of hope for the babyfaces on the roster.

Lack of Follow-Up: After Daniel Bryan's return last week, I was surprised and disappointed that WWE didn't follow up on his entry into the Royal Rumble this week. Did I miss it? Did I accidentally fast forward through a replay video of his big "life altering" announcement from last week? That was built up and treated like a huge deal last week. If it was that big of a deal, then do something to follow up on it this week. The other big piece of news from last week that was ignored totally this week, was the announcement of Smackdown that Edge and Christian were bringing this huge law suit against WWE, Seth Rollins and The Authority for what happened to them at the end of last week's Raw. That is potentially a very important angle going forward, yet it wasn't ever even mentioned on Raw (again, did I miss it?). In three hours it is ridiculous that WWE can't find some time to bring up these to major developments from last week.

Jon Mezzera is PWTorch.com's WWE Hits & Misses Specialist, providing his point of view for Raw and Smackdown each week. Email him at his NEW email address - jmezz_torch@yahoo.com.

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

[Torch art credit Grant Gould (c) PWTorch.com]

We suggest these recent related articles...

9/28 WWE Raw Hits & Misses: Kane's Split Personality, Divas Revolution, Heyman & Big Show, Reigns vs. Wyatt

9/7 WWE Raw Hits & Misses: Paige vs. Banks, Rollins vs. Ryback, Orton vs. Sheamus, Cena & PTPs vs. Rollins & New Day

8/24 WWE Raw Hits & Misses: Opening Segment, New Day, Dudleys return, Stewart, Sting