WWE RAW HITS & MISSES 9/11: Reigns vs. Jordan, Lesnar-Strowman brawl, Cena vs. Strowman, Cena-Reigns III, Miz TV

RAW HITS

Reigns vs. Jordan: This was a good follow up to last week’s match between John Cena and Jason Jordan. This week, it was Roman Reigns who went up against Jordan after giving Cena grief for taking 20 minutes to beat a rookie (although it wasn’t nearly that long). Like last week’s match, this was good. Jordan is a good worker. He just hasn’t connected with the fans in part because he is bland without Chad Gable, in part because his storyline as Kurt Angle’s son is stupid. But, at least he is giving good performances in the ring. Reigns performed well also.

Lesnar – Strowman: WWE certainly is doing their best to build up Braun Strowman as an unstoppable monster. They are doing a better job getting behind him this early in his career than they have for anyone in a long time. Paul Heyman gave a good promo to build up their match at No Mercy. Heyman understands the importance of building up Brock Lesnar’s opponents, not tearing them down (unlike Cena and Reigns). But the real story here was the physicality between Strowman and Lesnar. They have already been in the ring together, so you can’t say they gave away too much. After Strowman got the better of Lesnar early on, Lesnar was able to recover which was good and hit a German suplex. And then Strowman no sold it and popped right back up to a big pop from the crowd. He once again got the better physically of Lesnar which should only build more anticipation for their Universal Title match in a few weeks.

Cena vs. Strowman: I don’t understand why this wasn’t the main event. It is like WWE gave up on the third hour of the show. They had the hook of Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose trying to find a tag team to face The Bar and Gallows & Anderson in the main event, and they announced that Miz would have Enzo Amore on MizTV. But, I’m not sure either of those was a good enough hook to get viewers to stay past what was the real main event. Also, Cena vs. Strowman could be a PPV main event. It makes no sense at all why this match wasn’t announced last week. This was the first week up against Monday Night Football. This match should have been announced last week. They didn’t provide a hook for next week either.

That is enough negative for a Hit. This continued the strong build for Strowman. He dominated Cena in this match. Cena did get a few come backs here and there to give his fans hope, while selling for Strowman to continue to show that he may just be unstoppable. He did get in a few big offensive moves towards the end to gather some momentum. He can’t be squashed when he’s going to face Reigns at the PPV. That led to Strowman getting himself disqualified for hitting Cena with the steps. Well actually, that didn’t get him disqualified for reasons that I don’t understand at all. But he was DQd a moment later for slamming Cena on the steps in the ring. That bit of referee inconsistency was bad, but not enough to ruin a good match.

RAW MISSES

Cena – Reigns: This was not a good verbal exchange. There were a few good lines in there, but overall it was bad. Reigns in particular had no fuel, at least no believable fuel. Does anyone think that Reigns has had more good matches in two years than Cena in his career? Yes, Reigns has had some good matches, but Cena’s list of GREAT matches includes opponents like Shawn Michaels, Brock Lesnar, Daniel Bryan, CM Punk, Kevin Owens and most recently AJ Styles, all of which were Match of the Year candidates (is there a better WWE match this year than Cena vs. Styles at Royal Rumble?). And who cares about having great matches? You should care about having won more matches. He also made fun of Cena for not breaking into Hollywood. He is no Rock, but Cena was in “Trainwreck” opposite Amy Schumer which made over $100 million on a small budget. He was in “Sisters” opposite Tina Fey which also made over $100 million on a small budget. Those aren’t huge hits, but hits. He hosted the ESPYs last year which is a pretty big deal. He is starring in the Transformers spinoff “Bumblebee” which is currently filming in my home town! That’s a pretty big deal considering that the Transformers movies have averaged about $876 million worldwide at the box office. He also claimed that ticket sales are up with him as the top star. Again, why should he care? He should care about winning Championships. And I’m not convinced it is true. Maybe it is, but it doesn’t feel true. It didn’t feel true at the last Raw I attended with Reigns and no Cena compared to the previous one that had Cena and certainly a much bigger crowd in the same building. Cena had some better moments, but ended with the cheap line about Reigns failing a drug test. I don’t know why they would bring this up. I had forgotten about it. I wonder how many fan even knew about it, and how many of those who did had forgotten about it like I had. It just didn’t work.

MizTV: If Miz was supposed to be a babyface and Enzo Amore was supposed to be a heel, then I might give this a Hit. But, I don’t think that’s what WWE wants us to think. I think they want us to cheer Enzo and boo Miz. But, Enzo came across once again as a heel and Miz came across as a babyface. Now Enzo still had fans cheering for him for reasons that I can’t understand. Nothing makes me madder in life right now than the fans who like Enzo Amore. I have hated him since he was in NXT and was scripted as a babyface. Now that he is scripted as a heel, I still can’t understand why people like the guy. He is terrible at his job, super annoying as a human being, and scripted in a way that makes his character a bad person. Everything that Miz said about Enzo was true. What a jerk to suggest that Maryse had been unfaithful to Miz. Under other circumstances, that might work, but hints at infidelity haven’t been a part of their storylines at all. And then the jerk fans chanted “who’s your daddy?” What assholes. I loved seeing Enzo put in his place. I don’t think WWE wanted me to feel that way. And, I’m not going to boo a happily married couple for announcing that they are having a baby, but I think WWE wanted me to. So this segment failed to me.

Hardys & Ambrose & Rollins vs. The Bar & Gallows & Anderson: This wasn’t a terrible match. It was decent enough, but with that much talent in the ring and when you save it for the main event on the show, it felt like a let down. It wasn’t good enough. There were some sloppy moments. The worst was when Ambrose was being pinned and Matt Hardy tripped coming into the ring to break up the pin. For no real reason, the referee just stopped counting because he knew he was supposed to. If you ask any MLB manager, they will likely say that they can live with a physical error, but they really get upset at the mental ones. Hardy tripping was a physical error that was bad enough, but Ambrose should have been aware of what was going on and kicked out anyway. That was a terrible moment, and while the rest of the match was better, it wasn’t good enough. It was formulaic. The exciting Hardy Boyz were practically a non-factor in the match. They didn’t do enough to get their fans into the action. The ending was dull with Cesaro & Sheamus sort of walking out and leaving Gallows & Anderson behind to lose. The Hardys sort of stood there to hold them off, which would have worked better if The Bar had actually tried to get back into the ring at that point. So, this didn’t work for me.

NOW CHECK OUT LAST WEEK’S COLUMN: WWE RAW HITS & MISSES 9/4: Cena-Reigns sequel, Strowman vs. Show main event, Miz vs. Hardy, Jordan vs. Cena, Enzo, more

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.