WWE RAW HITS & MISSES 8/5: Roman Reigns attempting murder mystery, Seth Rollins response to Lesnar, 24/7 Title at OBGYN, Andrade vs. Mystery, Becky and Natalya interviews, Miz TV with Goldberg appearance

Opening Segment – MISS: Initially, I liked how Raw started with Samoa Joe showing good intensity in interrupting the start of the show by standing on the announce table. It was something different. But, his interchange with the announcers wasn’t particularly good. It felt too scripted how he asked to see the video of what happened to Roman Reigns on Smackdown. They wanted to get the replay on the show, but wanted it worked into the flow of the show, as opposed to just playing it at the start. But, it was forced here. Plus, they kept in the ridiculous camera angles from that moment in the replay which shows bad judgement. It created a hook for the rest of the show in waiting to see what would happen once Reigns showed up, but why wasn’t he there at the start?

Lynch & Flair vs. Natalya & Stratus – HIT: The idea that Becky Lynch and Charlotte Flair would be forced to team together made no sense. The action with Natalya wrestling Becky and Charlotte at various points in the match was pretty good. They are three good workers. It was smart to keep Trish Stratus out of the match in order to build anticipation for her wrestling at SummerSlam. Having Charlotte turn on Becky and walk out on the match fit in perfectly with her character. Last week, it seemed like WWE was trying to position both Becky and Natalya as unlikable heels (or unlikable babyfaces?). This week, they clearly were setting up Natalya as the heel by having her get purposefully disqualified to keep the Sharpshooter on Becky in the ropes and shoving Trish afterwards. But, it felt inconsistent with her character.

Andrade vs. Mysterio – HIT: This was a very good match between Andrade and Rey Mysterio. It went a decent length at 12 minutes and was nice to see it go with just a regular commercial break (never thought I’d be happy to see those) as opposed to some type of odd match break and restart. We saw these two have multiple good matches on Smackdown earlier this year, making me want to see the blowoff to their feud at WrestleMania. They never really had that culmination, so it is good to see them go back to it here. But, was this the end?

24/7 Title – MISS: I liked the idea of taking a break from the typical 24/7 Title silliness by having Maria Kanellis hold onto it for awhile as a pregnant champion. Just give us a break for a few weeks. Instead, they went right back to it with Mike beating her during her OBGYN appointment and then losing it a minute later to R-Truth in the waiting room. In addition to the disappointment that we ended up right back where we were, the way it was shot wasn’t good. The “set” of the waiting room looked terrible and fake. WWE should have the money and production values to be able to make a real looking doctor’s office and waiting room.

Becky and Natalya Interviews – HIT: WWE did a nice job of following up on what happened between Becky and Natalya in their tag match with these two interviews later in the show. Both Becky and Natalya performed well in the interviews. They added a layer of intensity to their feud heading into their Title match at SummerSlam. Overall, I haven’t liked the storyline of this match, but the final build was good.

Seth Rollins – MISS: The follow up to the attack by Brock Lesnar on Seth Rollins last week wasn’t good. Paul Heyman was ok on the mic setting the stage, but nothing about it was particularly memorable. Rollins was an idiot for coming out to attack Lesnar despite the rib injury. He was supposed to look heroic, but he looked stupid. His performance afterwards talking about showing up and beating Lesnar despite being hurt wasn’t strong. It was odd to hear him say that “this” is all he has, when we spent last month learning about his relationship with Becky. If I’m her, I’m pissed that he would say that “this” is all he has. His lines failed to get a pop from the crowd. I’m sure that wasn’t the super positive response Rollins and WWE were expecting.

Harley Race Tribute – HIT: WWE put together a very nice and moving tribute video on the life and career of Harley Race who passed away last week. It was a classy tribute to a legendary wrestler.

Angle/McIntyre/Alexander/Wyatt – MISS: It made sense for WWE to have a match between Drew McIntyre and Cedric Alexander on Raw this week, but they didn’t want to give that match away yet. So they had McIntyre attack Alexander before the match could start to get away from it. But, they also wanted Bray Wyatt to attack another legend and since they were in Pittsburgh, they had that legend be Kurt Angle. In order to have him in the ring to get attacked, they had him randomly be the guest referee for this match. Like Status on the King’s Court last week, this felt forced. It was too random. While I like the idea of Wyatt to attacking legends, this didn’t build to his PPV match against Finn Balor. So, the timing of it didn’t make sense.

The New Day & Ricochet vs. The OC – HIT: What started as a regular tag match turned into a six man tag match after AJ Styles got involved and Ricochet made the save. While this is another example of a match restart, this is the type of match change that WWE has always done, long before the recent trend of stopping the wrestling during the commercials. It was the Teddy Long Special. So it worked ok. After the commercial, we got a good 7 minute six man tag match featuring some very good workers. It was nice to see The OC get the victory. They needed the win more than New Day & Ricochet.

Someone Tried to Kill Reigns – MISS: It didn’t make sense for Samoa Joe to demand Reigns come to the ring when he knew he hadn’t shown up at the building yet. He had been told he was on his way. He performed well, but he didn’t have a good script to work with. I liked that it took a minute for WWE to get a camera in the back to follow Joe to the parking lot. That was logical. This didn’t feel nearly as fake or staged as what we saw on Smackdown, but it still was a little fake in the way that Reigns was showing up for the show 2 hours after it started and just happened to park in a spot right where someone was waiting to run him over. The actual crash was well executed. It was good to see Joe showing human concern for Reigns at that point. It furthered the mystery and cement the fact that what happened on Smackdown wasn’t an accident. But, attempted murder is beyond the scope of professional wrestling. It isn’t believable. Someone should go to jail for this, not just have to face Reigns in a match.

Women’s Tag Championship Match – HIT: The match did go on for too long and did drag at times. They started to lose the crowd a few times, which makes sense. The only babyface team in this match has hardly been featured on WWE tv in the past month, so they haven’t had a chance to connect with the fans. It was time to get the Women’s Tag Titles off of the IIconics. I like their act, but it had run its course. They looked good in the opening minutes of the match before taking the loss. That was a nice hook for the rest of the match, knowing that there would be new champions in the end, but Nikki Cross & Alexa Bliss winning was quite predictable. The match earned its spot as a Hit with the final fall when it came down to Cross & Bliss vs. The Kabuki Warriors. Asuka and Kairi Sane carried the match. They were great particularly when it came down to that final fall. The fans seemed to lose interest in the match, but got back into it in the final few minutes because of the quality of the wrestling action as the pace picked up very nicely leading to the end. I hope this leads to a feud between those two teams going forward.

Miz TV – HIT: Nobody wants to see Dolph Ziggler vs. The Miz at SummerSlam. It seems like a decent number of fans (maybe a lot of fans) want to see Ziggler vs. Goldberg instead. The set of for the match with The Miz having Shawn Michaels and Ziggler on his MizTV show worked ok. It did make some fans anticipate a Ziggler vs. Michaels match which might be more appealing to some fans. But, some of the fans were already chanting “Goldberg” before Michaels said that he wasn’t Ziggler’s opponent. And once he said that, the “Goldberg” chants got louder and clearly those fans were excited to see him. The match should and likely will be a quick squash and it does help make SummerSlam feel bigger than it did before.

Announcers – MISS: The WWE announcers are usually a Miss, but I don’t talk about them often. This week, they were particularly atrocious. Their interchange with Samoa Joe at the start of the show wasn’t good. Why did Renee Young praise what Natalya did at the end of her match? She said it was the attitude that she needs to win the Women’s Title, but she should have been upset at her for not breaking the hold and shoving her Hall of Fame partner. There were too many times throughout the show where Young and Corey Graves’ bickering with each other took away from the matches. There were some childish remarks to each other like “you’re stupid.” It was too much. When Mysterio did the sliding sunset flip into the ringside barrier, Michael Cole called it “vintage Mysterio” even though he had never done that move in a WWE ring before (or if he had, it was very rare and not “vintage” at all). Graves tried to cover by saying it was vintage in being innovative. You can’t call a new move vintage! During the early part of the Tag Team Title match, they forgot that it was an elimination match. One of them talked about how the IIconics didn’t have to be involved in the end to lose their titles. But it was elimination, so they had to be pinned at some point to lose. They also talked about how you wanted to only tag out to your partner to stay in the match, but that’s the strategy for a one-fall match, not an elimination match. After the first elimination, they must have realized their mistake, because they changed to talking about staying out of the match so you couldn’t be eliminated. That was amateurish. When Cross & Bliss won the Titles, all the announcers could do was praise them for their chemistry. It would have been nice if one of the babyface announcers had been upset over their cheating. Yes, they had good chemistry in the ring in the way that they worked together to cheat to win. But, they can’t get heat for cheating if the announcers don’t show outrage over them cheating.

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 me on Twitter @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.

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