WWE RAW HITS & MISSES 9/4: Cena-Reigns sequel, Strowman vs. Show main event, Miz vs. Hardy, Jordan vs. Cena, Enzo, more

RAW HITS

Jordan vs. Cena: Raw got off to a pretty good start with the recap of the John Cena – Roman Reigns verbal encounter from last week, followed by this match with Cena taking on Jason Jordan. The match went 12 minutes and was good. Nobody really cares about Jordan. He works well in the ring and with some character tweaks could certainly get over at some point, but he isn’t getting over now. It will be interesting to see how WWE follows up on his having this strong showing in this match despite taking another loss. His double northern lights suplex was great. It was a good match to set up Reigns coming out to confront Cena, although I wasn’t thrilled with that encounter.

Miz vs. Hardy: This was a good Intercontinental Championship match with The Miz defending against Jeff Hardy. After Matt Hardy and the Miz-tourage got involved, they were ejected from the match and we got to see Miz vs. Hardy without that outside distraction. I’m not sure what WWE has in mind for the Hardys, but they’ve used them well the last two weeks. They could use some wins, but this felt like an important big win for Miz over a star like Jeff. They worked well together and executed a good match. It was fun to watch. The ending was interesting. The way Maryse sort of shook Miz’s hand to get him to move was different. It was sort of clever. It gave a bit of an out for Jeff without the overt interference we could have seen if the Miz-tourage had still been at ringside.

Hype for the Main Event: WWE did a great job of making the Steel Cage main event feel like a huge deal. They showed multiple replays of what happened the last time that The Big Show and Braun Strowman faced each other when the ring collapsed after a superplex. They strengthened that focus with the interview of the referee who was in the ring when it collapsed. That was a very nice touch. Both Strowman and Big Show got to be interviewed about the match. They put it into context and made their cases of why they were going to win and why they wanted to win. Strowman came across as a little whinny which is good. Show’s promo was very strong to get the fans behind him. This was all very well done.

Strowman vs. Show: The main event lived up to all of that hype. Strowman and Show have now had multiple good matches against each other this year. This was no different. I mean, it doesn’t make any sense why Big Show would try to escape by climbing over the cage. So that was silly. Otherwise, I had no complaints about this match. It was physical. It was hard hitting. Show pulled out a top rope elbow drop. That got a huge pop from the crowd who were really into this match. I wonder if there were any fans who were disappointed that the ring didn’t collapse again. It was still a cool moment when the superplex came even without another ring collapse. That was actually the right move. Strowman got the strong win and then got to get some post-match mic work to address Brock Lesnar. The slam of Big Show through the cage wall afterwards worked ok, but looked a little weak like Strowman was trying to protect Show, so the impact of the slam wasn’t what it should have been. It still worked well to underscore Strowman’s power.

RAW MISSES

Reigns – Cena: It seemed clear to me that Vince McMahon was upset at how poorly Reigns looked last week compared to Cena and he wanted to make Reigns look stronger this week. I don’t really care much about what happened during most of this verbal encounter because the ending was so screwy with Reigns challenging Cena to an actual fight only to have Cena just stand there smirking with Reigns getting the final word. I don’t mind Reigns getting the final word this week, but the way he got it with Cena not answering his challenge to fight was odd. I didn’t enjoy this segment up until that point, but that ending was forced and didn’t make me want to see their match.

Enzo Amore: So now in addition to being the most annoying character in the history of WWE, Enzo Amore is also a babyface who cheats. I’m not a fan of his character. He is a bad wrestler. He is poorly written. I have stopped watching 205 Live now that he’s going to be on it. I didn’t watch last week and have no intention of watching it this week. The pre-match bit with Cedric Alexander and Gran Matalik sort of trying to distance themselves from him for his remarks about cheating could have worked, but they were right back with him in his stupid, lame, unfunny insults at their opponents.

Balor – Wyatt: The performances from Finn Balor and Bray Wyatt were fine. In other circumstances, this segment could have easily been a Hit. However, once Balor brought out the Demon to defeat Wyatt at SummerSlam, the feud should have been over. Where else can it go from here? Balor teased the Demon at the end of his promo, but we’ve already seen it. I don’t need to see more of these two against each other right now.

Banks & Bliss vs. Jax & Emma: I could be wrong, but I don’t think that most WWE fans want to see enemies team up like this with Sasha Banks and Alexa Bliss having to team up in order to face Nia Jax and Emma. This is a match with three heels and one babyface. The crowd seemed dead for it. The wrestling action was fine. This is not the case of a match being a Miss for the effort of the wrestlers involved. I laughed when Bliss got scared of Jax. There was some good wrestling here. But, I had nobody to root for here.

NOW CHECK OUT LAST WEEK’S COLUMN: WWE RAW HITS & MISSES 8/28: Cena-Reigns gets people talking, Heyman and Lesnar, Banks vs. Bliss, Pelvis Wesley, Mickie-Emma

For another view from the original Hitlist author, compare Jason Powell’s views to mine by visiting ProWrestling.net’s “Hitlist” section HERE.

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@yahoo.com. Act now and become my 68th Twitter follower@JonMezzera (pretty clever handle right?). Just be aware that I don’t live tweet Raw, I don’t tweet much about wrestling, and I don’t tweet much at all.