WWE RAW HITS & MISSES 6/12: Ripley’s new Women’s Title belt presentation, Zoey Stark’s push, Rollins-Balor match hype, Owens losing his mind, Ricochet vs. Reedac

RAW HITS AND MISSES

Opening Segment – HIT: Raw got off to a good start with Rhea Ripley being presented with her new Women’s World Championship. It is good that WWE finally got rid of the Raw/Smackdown designations for their Women’s Titles. Dominik was great in coming out to celebrate with Ripley. They continue to be a great duo, but when will WWE actually build a program for Ripley within the women’s division? Cody Rhodes was good in his interruption which ultimately led to him challenging Dominik to a match at Money in the Bank, which Ripley accepted on his behalf which was great. This is a good side program for Cody before returning to Brock Lesnar presumably at SummerSlam.

Zoey Stark – MISS: I am a fan of Zoey Stark and I have been happy to see her getting a pretty good push right away on Raw after getting called up from NXT. Her pairing with Trish Stratus against Becky Lynch has worked so far. But, this was not a good performance. Becky was good in her part, but Stark stumbled. She needs to work on her mic skills, particularly developing a cadence without the pauses which invite the “What?!” chants.

Priest vs. Riddle – HIT: This was a good MITB qualifying match with Damian Priest beating Matt Riddle clean. I wasn’t expecting a clean finish here, as I assumed WWE would protect Riddle considering he’s likely facing Gunther for the Intercontinental Championship at the PLE. But, I won’t complain about WWE actually having a clean finish in a match like this. WWE seems to be positioning Priest as a future babyface who will break away from Judgment Day, but nothing is for sure at this point.

Kevin Owens – HIT: I continue to look forward to seeing Kevin Owens losing his mind over various little things each week as Sami Zayn tries to calm him down. I laughed so hard when he said he couldn’t wrestle in shorts and a t-shirt, so he has to change into different shorts and a t-shirt to wrestle. I also got a kick out of the later scene when KO was upset about not being able to understand the European Imperium despite being French. They are finding a great way to keep Owens & Zayn entertaining moving past the Bloodline storyline.

Ricochet vs. Reed – MISS: I’m not liking what WWE is doing with Ricochet, Shinsuke Nakamura and Bronson Reed. This is the second week in a row with a match involving two of these three that ended in a disqualification. Ricochet and Nakamura are not looking good as the babyfaces in this story. They are both in MITB, but Reed isn’t, so where are they going? I hope things get better moving forward, because these are three talented performers who should be in a much better program at this point.

Balor – Rollins – HIT: I’m not sure what to make out of the fans singing to drown out Finn Balor. Is it just that they like to sing Seth Rollins’ song that much? Are they really so behind Rollins, that they will sing to drown out anyone he’s going up against? Were they giving Balor a strong heel reaction, in not letting him talk? Or was it more that they weren’t as into Balor, so they were giving him the musical version of the “What?!” treatment? They were into it no matter the reason. Balor did a good job of fighting thought the reaction to talk about his anger at Rollins going back 7 years. Rollins was good too. This segment is a Hit for me, because it actually made me care about what was otherwise looking to be a pretty cold World Title match at the PLE. You knew it would be a good match, but you want there to be some buzz around it, and this segment gave it that buzz.

Undercard – MISS: Outside of the main event and the MITB qualifier, there wasn’t a lot of good wrestling on this show. The other matches didn’t stand out as individual Misses, but none of them were Hits. Rhodes vs. Miz was fine, but not particularly good or exciting. Lynch vs. Green was also fine, but it only lated 7 minutes, half of which took place on the commercial break, so we didn’t get to see much of it. I already talked about being disappointed in Ricochet vs. Reed. Rodriguez vs. Baszler could have been good, but they were only given 3 minutes and it ended with Ronda Rousey cheating to help Baszler win which didn’t seem necessary. Gable vs. Erik was only 2 minutes and seemed to exist solely for the purpose of showing Maxine Dupree do an arm drag on Valhalla. But, who cares about that? What happened to her Maximum Male Models? I’m not as into her working with Alpha Academy. Put that all together, and it wasn’t a good show for in ring action with a few exceptions.

Owens & Zayn vs. Gunther & Kaiser – HIT: One of the exceptions was the main event Tag Team Championship match. This was a strong main event. These are four talented wrestlers with three of the best workers in WWE and Ludwig Kaiser more than holding his own, showing that he too is very good in the ring. I could have done without the distraction from Riddle at the end, but it made sense given his feud against Gunther. It was also good to see Sami Zayn get a win with the Blue Thunder Bomb (Becky getting a rare win with a Disarm Her earlier in the show was good to see also). I have said so many times that wrestlers need to get some wins with non-finishers to help sell near falls in future matches, so this was good. I am definitely looking forward to Riddle vs. Gunther, but am curious to see where Owens & Zayn go from here. We will find out more on Smackdown.

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.