WWE RAW HITS & MISSES 11/12: Dean addresses turning on Seth, Rousey promo, Invasion, Strowman confronts Stephanie, Heyman-Lesnar-Mahal, Elias

RAW HITS

Strowman: I give WWE credit for addressing some of the problems with the stupid Raw vs. Smackdown theme for Survivor Series. I appreciate the fact that Braun Strowman told Stephanie McMahon to her face that he didn’t care about Shane McMahon or defending the red brand. I did not like how he destroyed the tag team division to start the show, but I liked what he was involved with after that. He came across as smart. His demands made sense. The whole idea that he would only be on team Raw to get what he wanted was strong. The rest of the segment was too long and overly convoluted with Ronda Rousey and Baron Corbin getting involved.

Rollins – Ambrose: Other than the fact that Seth Rollins started off this interview by saying that he doesn’t care about his match against Shinsuke Nakamura on Sunday, this was a good segment. I mean seriously, if Rollins doesn’t care, why should I? Moving past that, Rollins was good in the rest of the segment, but the star was Dean Ambrose when he finally addressed why he turned on Rollins a few weeks ago. The idea that he feels that he is stronger without The Shield was a good explanation. The visual of him burning the vest worked well. This continued the build to Rollins vs. Ambrose, but that match isn’t happening at the next PPV.

McIntyre: Drew McIntyre gave a good performance in addressing what he did to Kurt Angle last week, and more importantly, what he plans to do as the new leader of Raw going forward. He stumbled over some of the lines, so it could have been better. However, it was still strong enough with his intense delivery to get a Hit. Finn Balor’s interruption worked well. Balor smiled too much when he first got in the ring, but his mic work was strong too. Overall, his mic work is not his strength, but he was better than usual here. The dig that McIntyre took at Dolph Ziggler in setting up his match against Balor was interesting.

Ziggler vs. Balor: The match that followed was easily the best match of the night, although that isn’t necessarily saying much. This was a good match. The commentators talked early on about McIntyre’s shot at Ziggler which cemented the notion that it will lead somewhere in the future. The match started off slowly. It really wasn’t anything special for the first half, but got much better in the second half. Balor needed the win, so it was good to see him pick up the victory, even if it was a leverage pin. Ziggler kicking out just after the 3 count made sense to protect him, and since it was a leverage pin which didn’t come after a Coup de Gras, it didn’t hurt Balor.

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Heyman, Lesnar, Mahal: This is a minor Hit. Paul Heyman did his best to sell the importance of a match that really isn’t important at all. He did a good job of selling the idea that for a year, Brock Lesnar has been angry at the fact that AJ Styles came so close to beating him. So even though Lesnar won, he had a huge reason for wanting this rematch. The interruption by Jinder Mahal was odd. It did give Lesnar some guys to throw around to show his dominating presence, but it got the heel Lesnar cheers which didn’t make much sense. Of course, given what would happen one night later on Smackdown, I don’t even know what to think about the entire situation. However, in the moment, this was a Hit.

Elias: The posing bit is working pretty well for Bobby Lashley. The interruption from Elias was fun. He certainly is finding his voice as a babyface more each week. He is basically the same character as when he was a heel, but it has been tweaked to take away the troll aspects to it. His fake call to child protective services was very funny, but it came at the expense of a talented cruiserweight. If Lio Rush wasn’t a wrestler, I would have liked this even more. The match that followed was too short to amount to much, but wasn’t particularly good while it lasted.

RAW MISSES

Tag Team Battle Royal: This Miss is for the opening of Raw with a tag team battle royal to determine the team captain of the Raw Tag Team Survivor Series Team. To begin with, who cares? Then, seeing the tag teams in the ring made me think about how weak the tag division on Raw is. Then, Strowman came out to destroy everyone. As I said above, I liked what Strowman was involved in after this, but his attack to stop the match underscored how bad and meaningless the tag division is. Later in the show, we were expected to care about the restart of the match? And that match was so quick that if you blinked, you’d miss three eliminations. This was bad.

Tamina vs. Moon: This was a clunky and at times sloppy match. Tamina isn’t very good in the ring and she looked slow here. The spot where Ember Moon jumped through the ropes and bounced off of Nia Jax was awkward. This would have been a better time to have a statement from Jax and Tamina about their new team instead of an actual match.

Rousey’s Interview: What was that? Rousey has been doing so much better lately, but this was a big step back for her. I liked her promo last week, despite some reservations of the shots she took at Becky Lynch for having actual jobs before becoming a wrestler. This week, she said she wasn’t trying to insult Lynch, but then went on to keep insulting her for the same things. Then she went off on Millennials for some reason. Ronda is a Millennial. Even if she wasn’t one, the diatribe against avocado toast and what not would still come across as just an odd choice. Whoever is writing for her needs to do a better job. She was already up against a difficult task on this show in going up against the super popular (albeit maybe a heel?) Lynch. She needed a better promo to not get booed against Lynch latter in the show.

Ruby Riott: Do the Raw writers actually watch Raw or Smackdown? If they did, then they’d know that we have seen women like Alexa Bliss and Carmella do a fake sincere promo, only to laugh and reveal that they aren’t really sincere several times over the past year or so. Stop already. There was no impact to Ruby Riott trying to pretend that she was sorry for what she did to Natalya’s sunglasses last week, because we’ve seen this same exact performance from multiple other women so often. The fact that Natalya would attack her from behind was clever and the physicality was fine, but the whole set up to this feud – the rushed angle last week with the broken sunglasses and then this fake apology – has been very poor.

Women’s Team: The storyline of Alexa Bliss naming the final member of the women’s team for Survivor Series was a convoluted mess. Jax, Tamina and Mickie James were named without any fanfare. She then slipped in a line about Natalya being on the team which didn’t make sense given Bliss’ character. I don’t buy the fact that she would select Natalya, especially after what she would do later in the show. The idea that she would pretend to have Bayley and Sasha Banks wrestle for the final spot on the team made no sense. What if there had been a quick roll up early in the match where her stooges couldn’t get in the ring to break it up? Her plan was terrible and for what reason? Just to mess with Bayley and Banks? The match was good while it lasted, but was meaningless. Then, she names Riott as the fifth member of the team. But, why would she have Natalya and Riott on the team together? That’s a terrible decision.

Invasion Angle: Having Lynch get inside the building and attack Rousey in her locker room was a good idea. It worked well to establish Lynch’s killer attitude and the fact that she can indeed hurt Rousey with her Disarm-her finishing move. I would have been happier if the show had ended there. The idea that Lynch who has been dismissive of the rest of the Smackdown women would be able to lead them all to invade Raw points to the stupidity of this Raw vs. Smackdown gimmick. Charlotte was absent from Smackdown last week. The week before, she was hesitant to agree to Paige’s request that she captain the women’s team. She hates Lynch. Yet there she was, helping lead the charge of Smackdown women to come follow Lynch into battle. It was exciting and the badass image of Lynch bleeding from the nose and standing tall in the audience was memorable. Rousey did a nice job selling the arm injury. So there were some positives here for sure. However, I have to look past the in-the-moment excitement to how idiotic the entire storyline was. Plus, WWE continues to paint Lynch as a heel, but are doing a terrible job of it on the same night they did a terrible job of presenting Rousey as a babyface.

Given the injury to Lynch that happened in the melee, WWE might wish they had ended the show with the attack in the locker room too. It is an unfortunate injury to be sure, but assuming she comes back soon, this may be a blessing in disguise. She’s the hottest act in WWE right now, so if they can keep her hot through her absence, the fans will welcome her back as a huge hero when she returns. WWE needs to run with her popularity at that point and not fight it. Going to the anticipated WrestleMania match of Charlotte vs. Rousey at Survivor Series may be a sign that they will go with Rousey vs. Lynch at WM which would be better. But, in the short term, they need to give the L.A. fans a reason to cheer Rousey and boo Charlotte on Sunday.

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 HITS & MISSES 11/5: Elias settles in as babyface, Seth’s promo, Lashley-Balor, Rousey cuts down Becky, Jax & Tamina, Natalya’s sunglasses, more