WWE RAW HITS & MISSES 4/16: Miz TV, Superstar Shake-up, Rousey-Natalya, Moon vs. Mickie, Riott Squad, The Bar, McIntyre, Joe-Reigns

RAW HITS

Miz TV: The final MizTV on Raw (until next April when he is sent back to Raw in the Superstar Shakeup) was a good segment. It introduced Sami Zayn & Kevin Owens as the newest members of the Raw roster (a term that was used FAR too often during this show – part of the problem with the whole STUPID concept of the Superstar Shakeup as I detailed in great effort last week). There was a reasonable explanation that Stephanie McMahon had signed Owens and Zayn. If you ignore how Owens beat up Vince McMahon last year, this does make sense. The mic work from Miz, Owens, Zayn and Angle was strong all around. It was a fun segment which gave Smackdown one acquisition ahead of its own show. It also set up the main event and gave a tease with a mystery as the final babyface teammate who had never been on Raw before. I thought of Shinsuke Nakamura (Bobby Roode didn’t come to mind when trying to come up with Smackdown wrestlers who hadn’t been on Raw before) or someone from NXT like Johnny Gorgano. I knew it wasn’t going to be Nakamura, so an NXT call up seemed likely. Either way, it was a good newsworthy segment.

James vs. Moon: This was a good match that showcased the talents of Ember Moon better than the tag match last week. Mickie James can certainly be used in a better way, as she is still very good in the ring. However, it may just be that she is going to be used in this type of role to help get over wrestlers like Moon. That’s not bad. She is good in this role too and as long as she’s teamed with Alexa Bliss, she will presumably have a prominent position on the roster.

Rousey – Natalya: Their backstage segment was ok, introducing the fact that Natalya and Ronda Rousey had trained together. It gave a set up for Rousey to come to Natalya’s aid when Absolution was beating her up after the match. It was smart to give Natalya a win on her first night on Raw and Mandy Rose is definitely the weak link in their team, so it was the right choice for her to to the job. Rousey was good in coming to help Natalya and the brief physicality with Sonya Deville worked well. I’m assuming this will set up Natalya to turn on Rousey as she has been a heel on Smackdown. A Natalya vs. Rousey match makes a lot of sense considering they have been training together and she can help Rousey look very good in a singles match.

Main Event: Like last week, this week’s Raw ended with a feel good, but rather meaningless main event. This was a 10 man tag with Miz, the Miztourage, Owens & Zayn vs. Finn Balor, Braun Strowman, Seth Rollins, Bobby Lashley & the mystery partner revealed to be Bobby Roode. That was a lot of star power including 6 former NXT Champions. I don’t know that this was the best way to reintroduce Bobby Lashley in the ring, but it worked ok. Everyone got a chance to hit a few of their signature spots. They sent Miz packing for Smackdown in a fun way. At the end of a pretty poor show, it was nice to at least nice to get a fun, pretty long main event like this.

RAW MISSES

Raw’s First Pick: When Jindar Mahal went from Smackdown to Raw, Smackdown immediately became the A show. Overall, Kurt Angle did a poor job of acquiring talent from Smackdown. The best new talent on Raw is either from NXT like Drew McIntyre, is a free agent like Bobby Lashley, or was signed by Stephanie McMahon like Owens and Zayn. The show got off to such a poor start with Mahal as the first pick. You want the first pick to send a signal of how the show is going to go. That doesn’t mean that it has to be the biggest pick of the night. That should be saved for last. But, it should be a big pick. Mahal has improved in the ring and his match against Jeff Hardy was fine, but there are far more talented people up and down the roster to invest in. Plus, he is not good on the mic. He is boring. And in the end, Mahal as the first pick did send a signal of how the shake up was going to go in that it was very underwhelming. By having him lose the United States Championship right away, you send the signal that he isn’t that good.

Riott Squad: Why am I supposed to get excited about The Riott Squad on Raw, when they weren’t that impressive on Smackdown? I get the idea is that we’ve seen them against all the Smackdown women, so now we get to see them against the Raw women. But, they aren’t that good. They weren’t good enough to get a call up when they did last year. After just a few weeks, the other women on the roster started easily fighting back against them despite their 3-on-1 attacks. And after a decent at best Ruby Riott vs. Charlotte feud over the Smackdown Women’s Title, they sort of filtered into the background. I had forgotten about them over the last month or so. So, this didn’t feel big and the way they were supposed to get heat by interrupting the Bayley vs. Sasha Banks match didn’t work well since people aren’t engaged in that feud.

Duel Brand PPV Song: Ugh. I mean, WWE only went to split PPVs fairly recently since the brand split isn’t that old. The need for this type of big announcement of the return of duel brand PPVs wasn’t really needed at this point. And if you are going to do it, do something better than this lame song. It was so corporate and uncool and then you had cool acts who should be above this type of crap doing it with other acts that made more sense. I find it hard to believe that Woken Matt Hardy would be doing this. The Bludgeon Brothers shouldn’t be doing it. The Usos should be too cool for this. It was not good.

McIntyre: Dolph Ziggler has been defined so far down over the past year that he is meaningless at this point. He is very talented in the ring, but his character and presentation are so poor. Drew McIntyre got a great reaction from the live crowd, but I fear that he is going to be pulled down by being associated with Ziggler. Now maybe they will end up being a good team and getting a strong push. They may show great chemistry both inside and outside of the ring and after a few months I will be singing their praises. For now though, I am disappointed in WWE doing this for McIntyre’s Raw return.

Reigns – Joe: This was pretty much the same exact segment that we got last week. It didn’t work last week, and it didn’t work this week either. Roman Reigns came out to boos. He cut a lackluster promo about Brock Lesnar. He didn’t come across like the top babyface of Raw should come across. Samoa Joe then interrupted and despite being the heel got a great babyface reaction. He cut a good promo, but there was just not a strong comeback by Reigns. Why won’t Reigns point out that Joe lost to Lesnar too? I’ve seen Smackdown already (I usually wait to write Hits & Misses, but I wanted to see the end of the Superstar Shakeup first), and I have to say that it makes no sense why Angle would send Joe to Smackdown when he has a legit chance of winning both the Intercontinental and Universal Championships in matches that are already signed. I did tout this as a move WWE should make on Greg Parks’ Wrestling Night in America a few weeks ago, so it is a good move, but it doesn’t make sense for Angle to do it.

The Bar Loses to Breezango: The Bar lost to a joke team of Titus Worldwide multiple times in non-Title matches which hurt Cesaro & Sheamus more than it helped Titus Worldwide. They just lost to Strowman and a 10 year old. They are undoubtedly going to lose to Hardy & Wyatt at the Greatest Royal Rumble in a few weeks (this was obvious even before being traded to Smackdown – again a stupid move by Angle to trade a way a team with a 50% chance of winning his brand’s Tag Team Championship). So on what turned out to be their last night on Raw, they lose to an even bigger joke of a tag team in Breezango. If I thought this actually would mean the start of a push for the team on Raw, I might think differently. But, I assume they will be jobbing to the Authors of Pain before we know it.

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. Follow him on Twitter @JonMezzera.

NOW CHECK OUT LAST WEEK’S COLUMN: WWE RAW HITS & MISSES 4/9: Ronda Rousey-Stephabie, Paige’s speech, New Faces Arrive, Reigns-Joe exchange, Strowman & The Kid