WWE RAW HITS & MISSES 11/19: Rousey damage control, AOP lose, Potty Humor, Ambrose-Seth, Banks & Bayley vs. Jax & Tamina

RAW HITS

Banks & Bayley vs. Jax & Tamina:This was a pretty good tag match. Sasha Banks and Bayley continue to be wasted on Raw, but they performed well and carried Nia Jax & Tamina to this good match. They got in a nice amount of offense which was a surprise. I thought this match would be half as long as it was and be a more dominating performance for the heel duo. I was glad that it went longer and that Banks & Bayley looked as good as they did. Jax needed the clean win in the end so everything about this made sense and was well executed.

Rousey Damage Control:WWE could have handled Ronda Rousey getting boos at Survivor Series in a better way on Raw. But, they handled it pretty well and she ended up getting cheers in the end, so this was a Hit. She needed to pivot more towards Nia Jax than she did. She did talk about Jax which was good. Jax is super hated right now, so of course Rousey is going to get cheered going up against her. I also liked how she talked about Charlotte Flair and how she will get revenge on her after she’s finished her business with Jax. That was all good. That helped turn a mixed reaction into a pretty good babyface one. However, her strong statement about being a fighting Champion was a shot against Becky Lynch. That was a mistake. She delivered the promo well, and in other circumstances I would have said that it was well written. It was just not good timing to see her juxtaposing herself to the injured Lynch. Baron Corbin came out and saved the situation by not allowing Rousey to wrestle at first. That put any heat that Rousey still had onto him. By the time she finished talking to him, she was getting cheers from what sounded like the vast majority of the fans. Having her run through Mickie James very quickly made sense to get her badass self back on track. It appears that Rousey will be firmly planted as an over babyface against a hated heel in Jax at TLC.

Natalya vs. Riott:The set up for this match was terrible and I didn’t enjoy hearing the announcers talk about the whole situation with the death of Jim Neidhart. I appreciate the fact that Alexa Bliss took Natalya and Ruby Riott off of the Women’s Survivor Series team. That was one of the few logical moments in the Raw vs. Smackdown theme for the PPV. I said last week that it didn’t make sense for them to be on the team together. Getting to this match, once I look past the poor taste and lazy set up for the feud, the match itself was good. They worked well together and put on an entertaining match. Natalya wants revenge and she wrestled like it. I would not normally like a babyface being happy with a leverage pin in a grudge match like this, but given the interference from the rest of the Riott Squad, it made sense. Natalya got the win and got out of the ring before they could attack her. That made her look strong and smart. And the announcers did a great job at that point of talking about how Natalya must be happy with the win, but not satisfied fully in still wanting more revenge on Riott.

RAW MISSES

Strowman & Balor & Elias vs. Corbin & McIntyre & Lashley:Raw’s opening segment was ok. It wasn’t bad enough to get a Miss, but it wasn’t good enough to get a Hit either. After that lackluster start to Raw, the rest of the first hour was taken up with this dull six man elimination tag match. Other than Finn Balor and Drew McIntyre, we weren’t exactly looking at the best in ring performers on the roster. Braun Strowman, Elias and Bobby Lashley are solid, but not great and Baron Corbin is passable at best. So there wasn’t a lot of talent in this match. Then it was booked to have the heels squash the babyfaces for the vast majority of the match. Balor got beaten down for several minutes. He eventually got eliminated without doing much offense. Then the same thing happened to Elias. It got redundant. Then McIntyre got himself disqualified, but after that it was a long beat down of Strowman leading to a non-finish after a very long match which wasn’t satisfying. I get the idea of injuring Strowman to make Corbin look like a threat in their TLC match, but they could have accomplished that in an entertaining way.

Rollins – Ambrose:There were some good things in this long saga which took up a lot of the second and third hours of Raw. However, there was too much bad in it too. I liked most of the promo from Seth Rollins, but the line about how Dean Ambrose never said the word “love” was odd considering Ambrose’s wife was sitting at the announce table. In fact, the whole angle put Renee Young in a bad position. She handled it ok, but it was awkward. Ambrose’s response was also good other than the terrible line about Roman Reigns deserving leukemia because of all the sins he committed as part of The Shield. That got a deserving boo from the fans. It was not a boo for Ambrose the character saying something mean. It was a boo for WWE scripting Ambrose the character to say something mean. This led to the chase of Rollins trying to find Ambrose throughout the show. This was ok. But, as a Californian dealing with unhealthy air quality (and I’m 150 miles away from the Camp Fire), I don’t need to see Burn It Down written on a door. I didn’t need to hear Ambrose continually talking about a bad smell and covering his mouth and nose the way we have to cover our mouths and noses with proper masks in order to go outside safely. That was in California on the same show where WWE was encouraging fans to donate to the fire victims. Even if there was no connection to the fire, the bad smell bit didn’t work and seemed totally out of left field. The physicality at the end worked well. So, I did like some of this. But the offensive lines put this into the Miss column.

Pee Humor:WWE needed to cut its losses after Survivor Series and never bring up the bit where Drake Maverick peed himself again. Instead, they double downed on it and had a very long unfunny scene in the catering room with several people making bad urine puns to make fun of him. How does that get over the Authors of Pain? How is that supposed to play out on 205 Live? Even if it was funny, it wouldn’t be a good idea. And it wasn’t funny. It was terrible.

Authors of Pain Lose:So not only is their manager a joke, but they lost in 3 minutes to a team that hasn’t been well protected in Bobby Roode & Chad Gable. The AOP certainly didn’t look like strong Tag Team Champions on this episode of Raw. They only won the Title in the first place by beating Rollins in what amounted to a 3 on 1 situation. They only won at Survivor Series because their opponents were distracted by their manager peeing himself. They are being scripted to get pee-pee chants in their direction. They should be monster heels. Now, they just look like a joke.

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.

CHECK OUT LAST WEEK’S COLUMN:WWE RAW HITS & MISSES 11/12: Dean addresses turning on Seth, Rousey promo, Invasion, Strowman confronts Stephanie, Heyman-Lesnar-Mahal, Elias