SPOTLIGHTED PODCAST ALERT (YOUR ARTICLE BEGINS A FEW INCHES DOWN)...
Priest vs. Sami – HIT: It was nice to see Raw start off with a match instead of a long talking segment. It is always good to shake up the routine. Damian Priest and Sami Zayn had a good match against each other which isn’t surprising. They are doing a nice job of building to the Sami & Owens vs. Priest & Balor match at Payback. The ending with J.D. McDonagh helping Priest to get the win worked well in a vacuum. It fit in perfectly well with the Judgment Day storyline. It was good to see Priest upset even though McDonagh helped him win given the story. The announcers taking sides with Wade Barrett backing McDonagh and Michael Cole backing Priest was interesting. I said “in a vacuum” because there was a lot of interference in matches on this show. With Owens making the match a street fight later in the show, you know the rest of Judgment Day and McDonagh are going to get involved (which is why it was a stupid move by Owens). How will it all play out? Will someone like Cody Rhodes have KO & Sami’s back?
LA Miz – HIT: This was pretty good way to troll the audience with The Miz coming out dressed as LA Knight. He did a nice impression. It is too bad that he doesn’t mean anything anymore in his career. But, at least he will provide Knight with a win at the PLE to keep his fans from complaining when he doesn’t get the push that his response would suggest he deserves.
New Day vs. Viking Raiders – MISS: I’m not into this three team feud. WWE has done some of these triple threat feuds lately, mostly involving Bronson Reed. Now we are getting one in the tag division. I am still not a fan of the RKBro-wannabe team of Matt Riddle & Drew McIntyre. It isn’t clicking, although I suspect that we will eventually get the McIntyre turn. The Viking Raiders have been defined down with losses to both of these teams and Alpha Academy before that, so it is hard to take them seriously. There was plenty of good wrestling action, but you knew that McIntyre and Riddle were going to get involved, and could see exactly how with them at ringside. What were the chances that one of the wrestlers in the match would get thrown into them? It was predictable and the 2nd match in a row to end because of outside interference.
Gable vs. Kaiser – MISS: Come on, three matches and three outside interference finishes? Again, the wrestling action between Chad Gable and Ludwig Kaiser was certainly Hit-worthy. I mean, I expected nothing else. But, Gable is facing Gunther for the Intercontinental Championship next week on Raw. He got a flukey count out victory last week. He needed the 1-2-3 here far more than Kaiser needed to be protected. That would have been so much better to make him look like a legit contender to dethrone Gunther as IC Champ. With Payback having a pretty C-level lackluster card, wouldn’t the IC Title match make more sense there?
Rollins – Nakamura – HIT: This was a good final push for the main event of the PLE on Saturday. Seth Rollins was good in talking about his own back problems while saying he will still beat Shinsuke Nakamura. I liked that they had Nakamura interrupt with another pre-taped video with subtitles. He comes across as so menacing in these videos in his own language. This was very effective “verbal exchange” in a new and different way which led up to Nakamura once again getting the better of Rollins physically after attacking him from behind. I doubt Nakamura wins at Payback but WWE has effectively built him to seem like a legit contender.
Tributes – HIT: WWE did a nice job on Smackdown last week with their tributes to Bray Wyatt and Terry Funk. They replayed the videos for them on Raw which makes sense and added a nice little tribute video for former Raw guest host Bob Barker.
Lynch vs. Stark – HIT: Obviously there was interference in this match too as it was set up for interference as a Falls Count Anywhere match. If you are going to build the main event around Trish Stratus constantly interfering to try to help her protege Zoey Stark beat her rival Becky Lynch, maybe don’t have interference in three of the other four matches on the show. The only one without was Reed vs. Ciampa which unfortunately had a botched ending. Moving past the issues with the rest of the card, this was a good main event. I continue to enjoy watching Stark in the ring. She is really good. Stratus played her part well other than accidentally throwing a chair into Stark’s face (I assume that wasn’t planned). I appreciate the fact that Cole questioned why Stratus was able to constantly interfere despite the rules of the match. All three performed well with the strong ending after Stark accidentally knocked Stratus off the platform, allowing Lynch to drive her through a table with a Man Handle Slam for the win. Hopefully Lynch and Stratus can deliver an equally good match in the steel cage at the PLE.
(Jon Mezzera is PWTorch.com’s WWE Raw Hits & Misses Specialist, providing his point of view for Raw each week. Email him at jmezz_torch@yahoo.com. Follow Jon on Twitter @JonMezzera.)
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OR CHECK OUT JASON POWELL’S RAW HITLIST TA PROWRESTLING.NET: Powell’s WWE Raw Hit List: Becky vs. Stark, Chad Gable vs. Kaiser, New Day vs. Viking Raiders, Ciampa vs. Bronson Reed
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