HEYDORN’S WWE RAW RECEIPT 8/29: Riddle and Rollins give their feud significant momentum

This week’s episode of WWE Raw has wrapped. Let’s take a stroll down memory lane and relive some of the madness.

-A good little opening tag team match between The Judgement Day and the random pairing of A.J. Styles & Dolph Ziggler. The match was about The Judgement Day and to that end, they looked pretty good coming out of it.

-Now, the post-match angle with Rey and Dominik Mysterio? They did what they had to do to build the Clash at the Castle match, but it made me worried about Dom. Watch him whip those kendo sticks around. He’s passive. And if he’s to turn heel, it doesn’t bode well in terms of his performance range. Something to watch.

-Here is your project, WWE Raw writers. Make people care about The Miz stuff with Dexter Lumis. It’s possible and worthwhile. First of all, these types of stories have been all over WWE programming for years, but they’re laughed at with eye rolls due to them not being taken seriously. Paul Levesque could fix that here. Give Lumis some context. What is the deal with him? Give him a purpose outside of just being weird. The audience seems willing to invest in this, but they just don’t have a good enough reason to yet.

-Oh, hello Mr. Squash match. Squashes can work and it did for Bianca Belair, Alexa Bliss, and Asuka this week. Time and place for sure and this worked.

-Chad Gable is such a gem. Gable and Angle played off each other in a hilarious way and while the segment felt a little more like Vince McMahon in charge, it still worked on a three-hour wrestling show.

-Angle? On one hand, good for him. He’s always been able to pull off the comedy stuff and continues to do it well. On the other hand, man, he’s a long way away from the lethal killer he was in the ring. Tough to get him back that way since he can’t wrestle, but it’s a side of his character that should try to rear its head more often when he’s on television.

-Montez Ford showed up this week. The promo he cut was in the background due to Angle being out there, but that was a badass promo. Ford was serious, charismatic, and really fun to watch. It’s moments like that where you can see the main event potential come out.

-Matt Riddle and Seth Rollins upped the ante for their Clash at the Castle match this week. The fan recorded fight in the parking lot was a nice touch to freshen up their brawls and the sit-down interview played well. Look, that is how you use reality in a story. Using reality doesn’t have to be meta. If you know Riddle’s history and personal situation, this worked. If you didn’t, it still worked just as well within the confines of the story.

-Lashley vs. Miz? Pretty cool WWE Raw television match and though it existed to serve the Lumis story with Miz, Lashley secured a decent win with it too.

-How freaking great are Sami Zayn and The Usos right now? They play off one another with little nuances and mannerisms that really makes their relationship pop.

-Kevin Owens injecting himself into the Zayn story is smart. He’s credible, has history with Zayn, and will be taken seriously as an opponent if he teams with Zayn to go after Jimmy and Jey at some point. Great to see those two guys getting to sink their teeth into something promising.

-Good work between Austin Theory and Johnny Gargano. Theory has been effective walking the line of fake authenticity like a heel should and Gargano is selling it for him. When the match happens, it should be hot.

-Yikes. Likely not the match Triple H wanted the finals of the Women’s Tag Team Tournament to be. Things were sloppy across the board and just did not click at any point. Probably the worst match of the tournament.

-Now, the tournament itself was plagued by injuries, but you go with Raquel Rodriguez and Aliyah? Why not the upstart team that has been framed at the top of the women’s division? The belts where they are now signal that they still are a low tier priority in the division.

CATCH-UP: Roman Reigns calls himself “The Global Chief” ahead of Clash at the Castle