WWE RAW HITS & MISSES 1/25: Goldberg faces off with McIntyre, Alexa’s playground, and Charlotte misses

Opening Segment – HIT: I’m not interested in Goldberg vs. McIntyre for the WWE Championship at The Royal Rumble. I’m not interested in The Miz and his Money in the Bank briefcase being involved in anything. That said, WWE did a nice job with the opening segment. Drew McIntyre’s promo was good and it was followed by the short and sweet Goldberg interruption. It was what it needed to be. Miz and John Morrison provided a chance for each of them to hit their signature moves without touching each other. This was one of the few segments on the show that actually hyped the Royal Rumble PPV.

Long Stretch of Women’s Wrestling – MISS: WWE seems to be back in the mode of not wanting to have wrestling on commercial breaks. Here we got a 2 minute match between Charlotte Flair and Shayna Baszler. It was silly to give this match away with no hype for the first time. Now, it only went 2 minutes, so I suppose they didn’t want to build it up to disappoint the fans, but then don’t do the match in the first place. The fact that Flair was about to easily beat Baszler before Nia Jax interfered did damage to Baszler. The six woman tag that followed was ok, but the ending with the unexpected count out was bizarre. It seemed like the referee chose to finish the ten count since Baszler was slow to get in the ring and he didn’t want to look bad for stopping his count. Maybe it was planned. Either way it is bad. The restart after a commercial was ok, but it would have been better just to go to a commercial break. Jax won in the end and it took up a long stretch of the 3 hours that they have to fill. That part was fine, but a lot of damage was done in the meantime and the restarts were very jarring.

Woods vs. Slapjack – MISS: WWE has a chance to rebuild Retribution and give them some actual wins which they did last week. Xavier Woods didn’t need the win. Since he was going to be getting beat down after the match, they gave him the win, but that still reinforces the fact that Retribution is a bunch of losers. Mustafa Ali is doing his best with bad material.

VIP Lounge – HIT: The tension with Cedric Alexander and the rest of Hurt Business is premature, but I’m enjoying their performances. They were all good here in the VIP Lounge. They sold the tension without over doing it. Alexander in particular has been very strong in his big head heel character. The R-Truth stuff was silly, but it didn’t hurt anything. The physicality with Hurt Business establishing their dominance while Matt Riddle snuck in for a cheap shot on MVP worked well and laid a nice foundation for the match later in the night.

Sheamus vs. Miz & Morrison – HIT: This was another example of WWE not wanting wrestling on the commercials. They wanted to fill 20 minutes of time with Sheamus facing off against Miz & Morrison, but instead of booking a long handicap match with a commercial, they started out with a singles match and then added the handicap match afterwards. This worked in that formula better than the women’s matches as we got a nice, long uninterrupted match of Sheamus vs. Morrison. Then we got another decent length handicap match. The wrestling action in both matches was good. WWE continues to do a nice job of cementing Sheamus as a babyface which will make his turn mean more down the line. Finally, they were able to give Miz a win in the end even if it wasn’t a strong one.

Flair – Evans – MISS: Charlotte was at her best in the backstage segment with Ric Flair talking about his relationship with Lacey Evans. This was better than what we’ve seen recently. The problem was the scripting. Charlotte came across as likable here, but not earlier in the show. I’m still not sure how we’re supposed to feel about Ric. This would have worked better if Evans hadn’t been in the scene at the beginning. It wasn’t believable that Charlotte wouldn’t have attacked her to begin with. She looked weak for slowly backing out of the room in an unnatural way fully knowing that Evans had just left and was lurking in the hallway. With a tweak in the scripting, this could have been a hit for Charlotte’s improved performance with a sneak attack from Evans and a conflicted Ric. That awkward backwards walk out of the room took me out of the moment.

Alexa’s Playground – MISS: I am not a fan of this storyline at all and I disliked what WWE did with Alexa Bliss and Asuka last week. Watching this veiled replay video mixed with Bliss narrating it didn’t work for me. I was reminded of bad things that have happened recently in a very annoying manner.

Gauntlet – HIT: I had mixed feelings about this gauntlet with Riddle taking on Shelton Benjamin, MVP and Cedric Alexander. The positive is that this effectively filled a ton of time with some good wrestling action while building to Riddle earning a United States Championship match against Bobby Lashley. The angle also continued to play into the Alexander storyline. The negative is that Riddle looked like he was going to lose the first stage of the gauntlet against Benjamin if Alexander hadn’t accidentally distracted the referee. That damages Riddle. I appreciate that he got a quick tap out of MVP which helps sell his hold and the final fall against Alexander was good too. Overall, this gets a hit, despite my reservations.

Edge – HIT: Edge’s injury was very unfortunate. He was doing some great work with Randy Orton before that. He showed his mic skills again here within this long monologue about his comeback last year. In it, he said that he doesn’t have forever to make up for lost time. Edge was the only wrestler who put over his need to win the Rumble during the go-home Raw. He had a great surprise comeback in last year’s Rumble, so he doesn’t need to be a surprise this year. For better or worse, this was one of the only hooks on this show for the PPV on Sunday.

Bliss vs. Asuka – MISS: As soon as the rocking horse magically appeared in the ring, I was totally taken out of this Women’s Championship match. I simply no longer cared. I knew that Orton would make an appearance at some point, so I wasn’t invested in the match knowing he’d be out there before the end. The multiple magic makeup and costume changes were terrible. I want the world to get back to normal for so many reasons, but the number one reason is so that WWE can have fans again and then they won’t be able to do these edits in the middle of matches. I was a big fan of Voltron when I was a kid. When the lions would first come out, they’d get beat up. Then, they would form Voltron and win the fight. I always wondered why they didn’t just form Voltron to begin with. If Fiend Bliss is impervious to pain, why doesn’t she start out as that version of herself to begin with? While I can understand wanting to beat up someone who threw a fireball in your face, I don’t like seeing the man on woman violence with the RKO at the end. The burn makeup also looked cheesy to me. I just can’t root for any of these people.

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.

NOW CHECK OUT LAST WEEK’S RAW HITS & MISSES: WWE RAW HITS & MISSES 1/18: A masked Randy Orton, Alexa’s playground, and Ricochet vs. Styles