WWE RAW HITS & MISSES 12/30: Lana-Lashley wedding, Orton swerves Styles, Becky interview, Aleister Black vs. Buddy Murphy rematch, McIntyre

Opening Segment – HIT: The final Raw of the decade got off to a hot start with the opening segment featuring Kevin Owens, Seth Rollins & The Authors of Pain, and Samoa Joe. Owens was great in his promo. It was a smart way to inform fans that Rey Mysterio had lost the United States Championship to Andrade at a house show last week while tying it to the damage Rollins & The AOP had done last week. Rollins has embraced his new heel character and is doing great work. AOP are perfect in this role. Samoa Joe returning from injury as a babyface should work well as was always a popular heel. His character doesn’t seem much different so it should be good. The brawl at the end was strong.

Brawl Followup – HIT: When you don’t have a specific authority figure, it is a little cloudy as to who is making decisions like forcing Joe and Owens to leave the building. But, the scene worked. Joe and Owens had good chemistry in talking about what had happened and how it is just the beginning of a plan to take down Rollins. Joe was particularly good in threatening the security guards. That is an example of what I talked about before with Joe’s character not being that different than his heel character. Later on, we got a similar scene with Rollins and The AOP being escorted out of the building. The fact that all involved in the brawl had to leave was logical. It seemed like a set up for them to come back later in the show, but WWE showed restraint and saved the next steps in the storyline for next week. Later on, Mysterio got a chance to talk about losing the US Title to Andrade while continuing to put the emphasis on Rollins. That worked to keep his part in this story going.

Black vs. Murphy – HIT: The hot start to Raw continued with the opening match, a rematch between Aleister Black and Buddy Murphy that went about 16 minutes. That was a long, hard hitting, great match. I was worried that WWE would do their typical 50-50 booking and give Murphy the win. I am high on both of these guys, but putting Black over twice was the way to go as he can get pushed higher up the card while Murphy can move on to something else still elevated. The follow up is the key. Murphy needs to win his next match. While I wouldn’t mind seeing more of these two in the ring, what I don’t want to see is a best of 7 series especially since place is already up 2-0. I don’t want to see them become The Bar 2.

Rowan – MISS: I continue to not care what’s in the cage. I like that WWE is using squash matches on Raw lately, but do we need to see Erick Rowan in a squash every week? And, WWE missed an opportunity to have a good joke with the cage when Rowan was talking to Lana about not getting invited to her wedding when he could have referred to the cage as his plus 1.

Flair vs. Natalya – HIT: Charlotte Flair’s character is a mess. I honestly don’t know if WWE wants her to be a face or a heel, or if they think she should be above those character types at this point. Do they want me to cheer her or boo her? I don’t know. She came off like more of a heel in her promo as super arrogant, but Natalya seemed to be wrestling as a heel in their match even though she’s been a babyface. Charlotte needs to pick a lane and stay in it for at least a year. I am giving the match a Hit as it was a good match. These two are good workers who work very well together. They have had a lot of experience wrestling each other and it showed here.

Becky Lynch Interview – HIT: WWE continues to do a nice job with the build towards Becky Lynch vs. Asuka for the Raw Women’s Championship which we now know will happen at The Royal Rumble. That should be a great match and they are telling a nice story about it while tying it into what happened when they wrestled at last year’s Royal Rumble. In this interview, Lynch added to the story the idea that her contract is going to be up soon and she won’t negotiate a new deal until she beats Asuka. In general, I’m not a fan of adding contract talks to a wrestling storyline, but it fits in well here with what she’s been talking about with her position in the company which is trying to protect their top star from Asuka.

Street Profits vs. The OC – HIT: This was another good match on this show. I have been disappointed with the way the Street Profits have been used on Raw lately, so it was good to see them doing mic work hyping their own match instead of other things happening on the show. The match against Gallows & Anderson was good. They got a much needed win. I’m not sure I would have had the #1 contender to The Viking Raiders’ Tag Team Championship lose. At least there was logical follow up to the loss with the Street Profits being added to the Tag Team Title match, making it a triple threat. That at least shows that there are consequences to wins and losses. They won and gained something. The OC lost and they lost something.

McIntyre – HIT: This is a marginal Hit. I love that Drew McIntyre is getting mic time and the chance to have some dominating performances in the ring, this time a quick squash in a handicap match against Hawkins & Ryder. I am hopeful this means that they have big plans for him in 2020. However, he came across as a total babyface here. Raw has two clear top full time heels (in other words, not Brock Lesnar) in Rollins and AJ Styles. They have Andrade as a step behind them. They need McIntyre as the other top heel considering they have Owens, Joe, Randy Orton and Mysterio. They are building up Black as a potential top babyface. They have also introduced Humberto Carrillo as a strong opponent for Andrade. They also have Ricochet. They have to keep McIntyre as a heel for now, even though he would be a great face down the line.

Orton – Styles – HIT: Orton had to walk a fine line here in playing Styles, but not also playing the fans. In order to trick Styles into thinking that he really is hurt and can’t strike back, he had to trick the fans into thinking that he was going to be out for a long time and his career might be in jeopardy. That’s tough. When Mark Henry had his career best moment with his fake retirement speech it worked, because he was a heel, playing on the sympathy of the fans, to set up John Cena for induction into the Hall of Pain. That was meant to get the fans angry at Henry and it worked. This was the opposite. The fans could have gotten upset that Orton made it seem like he was seriously injured. Instead, the fans popped when he hit the RKO on Styles. Part of that is for how well he played his part, but a big part of it goes for how great Styles was in being so obnoxious towards Orton. The fans were happy to see Styles get what he had coming to him.

Hyping Next Week – HIT: WWE did a great job on this show of building anticipation for next week’s show. They announced two big matches, the triple threat Tag Team Title match and the return match between Mysterio and Andrade for the US Title. They also announced that Brock Lesnar would be on. They need him on to start hyping The Royal Rumble as someone on Raw is going to be trying to win to face Lesnar at WrestleMania. As I said above, they left the next steps in the Joe/Owens vs. Rollins/AOP feud for next week which should make fans want to tune in to see what happens.

Andrade vs. Ricochet – HIT: It didn’t make much sense to have the new US Champion in a squash match. I like these types of enhancement matches, but it makes more sense for newer wrestlers trying to establish themselves, or for someone getting a renewed push. Once you have a Championship, it seems like you’d be above facing jobbers. His short match allowed him to show off his vicious side in attempting to do the hammerlock DDT on the exposed concrete floor. Since Carrillo is injured, Ricochet made sense as a stand in to emphasize what Andrade has done recently to Carrillo and Mysterio. They ended up having a good match. Ricochet doesn’t have much going on right now so it made sense to have him lose, plus Andrade had to win as the new Champion going into his big rematch against Mysterio next week. Zelina Vega got involved to help Andrade win which worked fine.

The Wedding – MISS: This was a very good Raw until the closing segment. It wasn’t perfect, but I was thoroughly enjoying it. Unfortunately, the ending was so poor that it left a bad taste in my mouth (especially as this was the last moment of the decade for WWE). This story with Lana, Bobby Lashley and Rusev has been so horrible. I guess it makes sense to cap it off with another horrible segment. The acting was bad from everyone involved. It was so obvious that Rusev was in the giant cake, but why did he wait so long to interrupt? Did he know three other people were going to interrupt? What if Lana’s first husband, Lashley’s first wife and Liv Morgan hadn’t shown up? He might have missed his chance. The fact that this whole rebuild and reintroduction of Morgan was just to have her interrupt this wedding by hinting at a lesbian affair with Lana was terrible. I wonder how Sonya Deville feels about it considering her pitched lesbian storyline was dropped by WWE around WM last year. I know it was supposed to be over the top and campy. And I know a lot of people like that stuff. But I don’t, and the last time I checked, I am the one writing this Hits & Misses article.

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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.