WWE RAW HITS & MISSES 7/18: Opening segment a bad miss, Miz TV with Logan Paul misses too, more

WWE RAW HITS AND MISSES

Titus O’Neil – MISS: “We are getting bad press because of our CEO’s bad behavior, what do we do?” “Let’s start Raw with our most articulate black man who is well respected for his charity work and he can talk about what a great corporation we are!” “Great idea!” This was ridiculously transparent and pathetic. What a terrible way to start a show.

Lynch/Belair/Carmella – HIT: After that stupid start, the rest of the opening segment worked well with Becky Lynch, Bianca Belair and Carmella talking about the state of the Women’s Championship on Raw. Becky was definitely the highlight, but the others were good too. It set up that Becky would be facing the winner of Belair vs. Carmella at SummerSlam, so it announced a big match for the PLE while also building anticipation for the opening match.

Carmella vs. Belair – HIT: I didn’t need to see a third Women’s Title match between these two, but it was good enough to get a Hit, in part because of Lynch who was great on guest commentary. I didn’t like the stipulation that if Belair got counted out, she would lose the Title. I get that it is a follow up to the count out loss last week, but given the circumstances of that loss, it doesn’t make sense to punish her here. This stipulation would make more sense if she was a heel who kept her Title by getting counted out on purpose. Moving past that, they told a nice story with that stipulation during the match itself.

The KO Show – HIT: Most of this Hit is just for the fact that Kevin Owens is back and hopefully moving away from Ezekiel. He did talk about him and Elias, but in a way to suggest that he was moving on which I hope is the case. Another part of this Hit is for the BroKO moniker which was great. He and Riddle played their parts well. The attack from Seth Rollins to continue the hype for his match against Riddle at SS worked well. I am curious about what Owens will do next and hopeful for something more meaningful.

Judgement Day / Mysterios – MISS: I continue to not buy this storyline. I don’t like the pairing of Damian Priest and Finn Balor. I don’t believe that they would actually want to recruit Dominik Mysterio into The Judgement Day. WWE isn’t doing a good job at all of teasing that Dominik will actually turn on his dad. So if it happens, then it will seem like it came out of nowhere. Their hope is probably to make it a huge surprise, but if they go too far in that direction it feels unbelievable which it would at this point. Priest vs. Mysterio was fine. But, there were several segments on Raw that revolved around a story that isn’t working which brought down the quality of the show.

Street Profits vs. Omos & MVP – MISS: I hated everything about this. I didn’t like how Omos made Angelo Dawkins look small in their match. I didn’t like that Dawkins only won because his corner man successfully cheated while Omos’ corner man got caught. The tag match buried Montez Ford’s frog splash which had been protected as a finisher. Then of course, the match ended in another DQ with The Usos blatantly attacking the Street Profits. Shouldn’t Omos & MVP be mad at the Usos for costing them the match? This didn’t do anything to make me look forward to their Tag Title match at SS. I also question Jeff Jarrett being the special guest referee. That was a big disappointing reveal.

Styles vs. Theory – MISS: The verbal exchange between AJ Styles and Theory wasn’t very good. It was ok, so it wasn’t a Miss, but it certainly wasn’t a Hit. The What? chants didn’t help which isn’t entirely their fault, but still distracted from the segment. The wrestling action in their match was perfectly fine too, but it ended with a count out after interference from Dolph Ziggler. That might be ok if Ziggler was a heel costing Styles the match. But he is apparently supposed to be a babyface and he cost the heel the match. After the cheating from Ford and those two quick DQ finishes, having a cheap count out finish here with more outside interference was certainly a disappointment. But, WWE painted themselves into a corner where they didn’t want to have either Styles or Theory lose clean.

24/7 Crap – MISS: I try to ignore the 24/7 silliness which hasn’t been featured much on Raw lately. But, it was featured heavily on this episode during a match. In the past, the 24/7 stipulation would be put on hold when the champion was in a match, but for some reason that wasn’t the case here. Asuka was in the mix for a potential Women’s title very recently with her feud against Lynch. So, it was disappointing to see her involved in this crap too. Thankfully she didn’t try to win the 24/7 title. Why some of the pins counted for the 24/7 title but not the 6 woman tag match that was happening to begin with didn’t make sense. This was just a mess.

MizTV – MISS: There were some good things in the first half of this show, but man did the second half suck. It was one Miss after another culminating in MizTV in the final segment with Logan Paul totally miscast as a babyface. I don’t care about Paul’s background. I’m not offended by WWE working with him, but I certainly understand why some fans are. Given the potentially negative press and reaction that surrounds him, they need to be careful how they use and present him. The problem is that he is a natural heel, but maybe he doesn’t get that fact. Maybe WWE doesn’t get that fact. He came across terribly here with The Miz. I’m so tired of the tiny balls bit with Miz. I don’t want to see this match. The way they used him for WrestleMania was much better than this so far.

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.

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