James Caldwell, Torch Assistant Editor (5.5)

I'm giving Raw a slight thumbs up despite some serious concerns with the show. It was the second hour of TV following a live Raw, which followed a three-hour PPV the night before, so creative was obviously running on fumes putting together the idea. Some point in those meetings, as they were running on fumes, someone decided it would be a good idea to do a Six-Pack title match at the next PPV, which is the exact opposite of what they need to be doing to try to sell a PPV. Sheamus vs. Wade Barrett was received well by the audience when it was teased. Obviously, WWE doesn't believe that's enough star power for the Raw brand's top PPV match, so, they decided to add four more people to the mix! At the end of the day, it's going to water the whole situation down. The idea of multiple-man, gimmick-this, gimmick-that, stipulation-this, stipulation-that type matches are not novel anymore. They've been done death, which is why they aren't as effective as they could be as a selling point for a PPV. WWE doesn't need to run away from singles matches, they need to run back to singles matches as selling points.

The problem is WWE doesn't have the discipline to set up, market, and sell a singles match. They exposed that with The Miz vs. John Cena match on Raw. There was fairly decent pre-match hype (beyond WWE's standard pre-match set-up), but a lack of recognition for the history in play concerning Miz's journey from being gum on the bottom of Cena's ring boots to being a top-flight heel capable of being in the same sentence as Cena without anyone batting an eye or bursting into laughter. That aside, with the pre-match hype in place, they were given a good amount of TV time to tell a pretty good story in the ring, have Miz look strong for the most part to reinforce he's a big deal, and continue to hype Miz vs. Daniel Bryan.

Yet, immediately after Cena vs. Miz, there was no follow-up. They missed that all-important follow-through element on examining the consequences and ramifications of what happened. Bryan cost Cena a match via DQ; Cena didn't seem to mind. That issue needed to be fleshed out. The announcers also needed to discuss Miz's performance - did he hold up with the nine-time champion (as silly as that marketing tag is considering the frequency of title changes in WWE)? Was Bryan in the right for running in during the match for an eye for an eye? Will it lead to Bryan vs. Miz for the U.S. Title at NOC? They missed the follow-through and instead jumped right to Santino & Kozlov vs. the Usos. They needed to stay in the moment rather than moving right along to the next element of the theater play. It exposed WWE's lack of discipline when it comes to marketing and promoting pro wrestling matches.

Other thoughts: Credit Sheamus for doing a terrific job carrying the show with his facial expressions reacting to each person he came in contact with while sitting on the throne. Also, reacting to each opponent as they came to the ring for the Night of Champions title match announcement. He continues to show he was a good pick for WWE to build around on Raw. ... I thought Zack Ryder actually looked better than Ted DiBiase and John Morrison coming out of Raw. Sure, Ryder was squashed in 12 seconds, but there was specific emphasis on him, while DiBiase continues to flounder and Morrison is an after-thought. It's hard to fathom that DiBiase was nearly on Randy Orton's level at WrestleMania 26 just five months ago during the Legacy blow-off match. ... Edge and Chris Jericho got their needed wins back after silly and clean losses last week, respectively, but WWE still managed to make Jericho look like the court jester taking a chop from Great Khali after their match. ... Speaking of the John Cena DQ loss, why did he receive a WWE Title shot if he "didn't impress" by losing his match? The Raw GM inconsistency needs to be addressed. It seems to change from week to week who he's favoring, but they're certainly planting seeds for it being Michael Cole. ...

Nexus was a complete after-thought, which was likely a result of the double Raw TV taping and not wanting to burn out the Los Angeles crowd on seeing Nexus for four hours. However, WWE has a decision on their hands going forward to next week's episode - re-build and re-strengthen Nexus or disband the group and focus on Wade Barrett, while allowing the other Nexus members to find their way elsewhere? There are plenty of ways to re-focus on Nexus, e.g. fleshing out the issue of Darren Young stepping up against John Cena last week and losing, yet the other Nexus members won by flukes to stay in the group. Or, John Cena teams up with Darren Young opposite Nexus and Barrett, who applied the letter, but not the spirit of his decree that anyone who lost last week would be exiled. Skip Sheffield's injury could be a factor in WWE determining whether to continue with the angle. Husky Harris is out there from NXT Season Two as a possible replacement to re-strengthen the group.

Jon Mezzera, PWTorch.com Contributor (7.0)
This was a pretty good episode of Raw with a poor ending. I liked the focus of the show. I prefer these types of shows where WWE sets up the theme for the week and sticks to it. Here, the set up was the announcement from the General Manager that Sheamus would be watching a series of matches involving potential challengers and ultimately pick his own #1 contender for the WWE Title match at Night of Champions. It was a unique concept that allowed for a series of solid matches. Only one match, John Cena vs. The Miz stood out as being particularly good. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was much better than Miz's other recent high profile Raw match when he faced Randy Orton awhile back. He and Cena worked well together in this match and he came out looking like a future main event player. The ending worked well to keep Miz strong, while also continuing to build towards a likely US Title match between him and Daniel Bryan at the PPV. The set up to this match, including a solid interview with Cena and a very good interview with Miz worked very well also. The rest of the matches were just okay.

With a good opening, a focused show, a great interview, a very good match, and a string of solid wrestling, Raw was looking to be very good heading into the final segment. Unfortunately, that segment dropped my score by 1.5 points. The idea that Sheamus would pick Zack Ryder instead of any of the wrestlers in the try out matches made a joke out of the entire show. I did like that Wade Barrett got involved, and he and Sheamus did a good job of reacting to the announcement that in addition to Barrett, Sheamus would defend his Title against four other challengers. But, the way they were already queued up and waiting to come out was terrible. Did the GM let Chris Jericho, Edge, Randy Orton and Cena know ahead of time to be ready?

We already have PPVs with built in multi wrestler Championship matches, so I was disappointed that we will get another at Night of Champions, although it was very predicable. With this PPV's format, if Sheamus only had one opponent, the rest of the upper card would be off the show. If you want to continue Sheamus vs. Orton, and feature Cena, Barrett, Edge and Jericho, this is what has to happen. Moving on, the sudden rapid fire finishers at the end was cheesy. It made Cena look like an idiot for turning his back on Orton. What did he expect to happen? It was a poor ending to what was an otherwise pretty good show.

Greg Parks, Torch Columnist (6.0)

This had all the feeling of a taped show with longer matches and not a lot of in-ring, non-wrestling segments. But you won't see me complaining about that ratio. I'm really glad fans seem to be warming up to Sheamus. I wrote a column for the newsletter a few months ago sticking up for the guy when so many people, at least on the Internet, were riding him for being pushed to the Championship so quickly. He seems to have won over a large part of that crowd now. I'm happy to see that.

Most of the matches on the show weren't long enough to mean much, and I was fully expecting the Triple Threat match to go a little longer. I was looking forward to it, anyway. I thought Sheamus was actually going to call out Evan Bourne in the last segment, given his success historically against the guy. The Miz had a nice showing against John Cena, where he got most of the offense and even a DQ victory. Contrast that to where he was a few months ago in his feud with Cena. I'm not looking forward to a Six-Pack Challenge, but the Night of Champions concept makes it tough to include many of the usual suspects we see on PPV.

We suggest these recent related articles...

CALDWELL'S WWE RAW RESULTS 10/5: Complete "virtual-time" coverage of live Raw - Lesnar returns, Cena's Open Challenge, more

CALDWELL'S WWE RAW RESULTS 9/28: Complete "virtual-time" coverage of live Raw - John Cena's Open Challenge, Paul Heyman, Reigns vs. Wyatt main event, MizTV, more

CALDWELL'S WWE RAW RESULTS 9/21: Complete "virtual-time" coverage of live Raw - Night of Champions fall-out, Cena vs. Rollins U.S. Title re-match, Bizzaro Kane, more

CLICK HERE FOR EVEN MORE PW.NET HEADLINES

CLICK TO EMAIL THIS ARTICLE
CLICK HERE TO RETURN TO MAIN LISTING