SPOTLIGHTED PODCAST ALERT (YOUR ARTICLE BEGINS A FEW INCHES DOWN)...
The Announcers – MISS: I was disappointed to see Raw start off with Tom Phillips on instead of Vic Joseph. I assume if this was just a one week thing because of illness or something, they would have said so. So, that makes it seem like Phillips is replacing Joseph as the Raw play-by-play announcer. He isn’t as good as Joseph and is tired at this point as a long-time announcer. I was more disappointed to see Byron Saxton back. He is terrible at his job. I don’t understand how anyone can think he adds something positive to the broadcast. Jerry Lawler has been mostly insufferable as the heel announcer lately. Raw overall has been good to very good over the last few months, but the announcing has not been part of that quality. It was even worse this week.
Drew McIntyre – HIT: WWE clearly got it right when they had Drew McIntyre win the Royal Rumble. His promo to start off Raw cemented himself as a babyface to challenge Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania. Drew is playing his role very well. He is having fun and connecting with the fans. It was good to have him challenge Lesnar right away. I do question having him win a handicap match against The OC. Gallows & Anderson are not Hawkins & Ryder. That was a mistake. McIntyre could have looked strong against one of them and not both, or a lower card tag team. It is good to see McIntyre in this role and I look forward to seeing how he continues to be built before WM, but I hope WWE doesn’t sacrifice more acts like The OC along the way.
MVP vs. Mysterio – MISS: This didn’t work for me. I assumed that MVP was just back for the Royal Rumble. It is ok if he is back full time, but if that’s the case, why have him lose in his first match back? Why bring him back just to job? I don’t understand that at all. The fans wanted to cheer him as a returning nostalgia star, so why have him face a very popular babyface like Rey Mysterio? The match itself was ok, not bad enough to be a Miss. But, the circumstances around the match made it one.
Aleister Black – HIT: This is more of a hopeful Hit for what is to come than for the actual content on this week’s Raw. After another effective squash match, Aleister Black cut a promo about how he was no longer going to wait for someone to knock on his door, but would start bringing the fight to the locker room. The promo itself was ok. But, Black has so much talent that I want to see him used better than he has been. The waiting for the knock got old, and while his feud with Buddy Murphy was good, he still needs to move on to something new and hopefully this will be it.
Owens & Joe Outsmart Rollins – HIT: It was nice to see babyfaces outsmart a heel. It doesn’t happen enough. This was a good pre-match segment with Kevin Owens and Samoa Joe tricking Seth Rollins into giving away the location of the Authors of Pain so that The Viking Raiders could take care of them to keep them from interfering in the Tag Team Title match.
Tag Team Championship Match – HIT: The match itself was also good. It is a shame that Samoa Joe appeared to get concussed (I’m pretty sure it was a legit injury) right before the commercial break. I hope he is ok. The way the rest of the match played out as a handicap match did work well to have Owens have to fight back against the odds. He was almost able to pull off the big win. The Joe injury might work out well assuming he is back soon because WWE can go back this as an actual two-on-two match down the line. The wrestling action was certainly good enough to want to see more of these guys in the ring.
The Man – HIT: It was good to have The Man back. Becky Lynch never went away, but she hasn’t been The Man lately. It was a good story to build to her Title defense against Asuka at the PPV. Now that she beat Asuka and got that proverbial monkey off her back, it was good to see her back as The Man in her backstage interview with Charlie Caruso. That is the character that got her so over to begin with (she was over as a traditional “white meat” babyface before that, but the anti-hero badass Man gimmick put her over the top as the top star in the company). Her reactions with the live crowd should be even stronger next week after this interview.
Andrade vs. Carillo – HIT: The United States Title match with Andrade defending the Title against Humberto Carillo was good. These are two exciting wrestlers to watch in the ring. The match went back and forth nicely and built well to the point where it appeared that Carillo was going to win the Title. Zelina Vega interfering to cause a disqualification was disappointing, but made some sense. The way Carillo snapped at that point was interesting. It was one thing to threaten Andrade with a hammerlock DDT on the concrete to get revenge for Andrade doing that to him last month. It was another thing to have him actually do it. I was with Lawler when he said “he actually did it!” It does give Carillo some edge which can be a good thing. He needed something to his character which didn’t have much to it. But, it still felt like he went too far as a babyface. We’ll see. They were writing Andrade out for 30 days due to a Wellness suspension, so that makes a little more sense than when it happened.
Charlotte – MISS: WWE has had too many bait-and-switch moments. They often occur with a match that is advertised that doesn’t happen, but lately it has been more like this with announcements that are promised that don’t happen (didn’t Daniel Bryan have a life changing announcement on Smackdown that never happened like 6 months ago? Bray Wyatt promised a new Firefly Funhouse character which never debuted. They dragged out Bryan’s choice whether or not to join with Sami Zayn with a few promises of getting an answer that didn’t come right away). WWE announced multiple times on this show that Charlotte Flair would declare which Champion she would challenge after winning the Royal Rumble. Instead, she said she would challenge someone but hadn’t decided yet. That was a long way to go to sacrifice good will with the fans by promising something and not delivering just to get some cheap heat on Charlotte. And then I’m not even sure she’s supposed to be a heel, especially in what would happen with her and The Kabuki Warriors. Her character has been a mess lately – not well defined at all. I was hoping that it would at least become clear coming out of the Rumble, but it certainly didn’t.
Charlotte vs. Asuka – HIT: At least the match we got between Charlotte and Asuka was good. These are two very talented workers and they have a nice history of good matches against each other. They were given 14 minutes to work and put on a strong match. Charlotte as the Rumble winner needed to win, but they wanted to protect Asuka who lost to Becky the night before and is half of the Tag Team Champions. They went with the interference DQ ending which was the second match in a row to have that type of finish. That brought down the quality of the match some, and the post-match fight with Charlotte standing tall hurt the credibility of the Champs (who are potentially top singles stars – we aren’t talking about the IIconics here). And as I said above, it muddied the waters of Charlotte’s character. So, I had some reservations about the match, but overall the quality was strong enough to get a Hit.
Street Profits – MISS: The Street Profits will continue to be a Miss as long as they are in this lame role as Raw hype men.
Mojo Rawley – HIT: This is as minor Hit. I would rather see the idiotic 24/7 title go away, but at least this is different than having R-Truth as the comedy champion in a slapstick movie running away from challengers. It reminds me when Steve Blackman won the Hardcore Title and wrestlers stopped trying to win the belt from him since he carried around a bag of weapons to fend off any challenger. You have Mojo Rawley playing the role of more of a badass who wrestlers are hesitant to challenge. The addition of Riddick Moss as his offensive line was ok. It wasn’t great, but I like the idea that it will be something different for the 24/7 title.
Lana vs. Morgan – MISS: I think Liv Morgan has talent, but she isn’t nearly good enough to elevate Lana to a passable match. This storyline has been so bad and hasn’t done anything positive for any of the wrestlers involved.
Erick Rowan – MISS: It was bad enough when we were seeing a tease of something in the cage during an Erick Rowan squash match. This week, we were back to just a squash match without any more development or tease for the cage. They need to end this crap ASAP.
Edge – Orton – HIT: I had one major problem with the ending of Raw, but overall it was a very good segment with an impactful angle to close out Raw. Edge was great. It isn’t surprising that he was so good because he was being so real. This felt like the least scripted promo in WWE in a long time. He was great in reacting to the fans reacting to him. He showed genuine emotion. He set up that he is back for more than just his appearance in the Rumble, but doesn’t know how long he’ll be able to last. As soon as Randy Orton came out, you had to know that an RKO was coming. That was predictable, but Orton performed very well here in selling emotion. It will be interesting to hear what he says about what he ultimately did to his old partner. WWE teased an Edge vs. AJ Styles match, but was that the plan? Did they change plans because of Styles’ injury? Or was this the plan all along? This is clearly bigger for Edge than Styles. Edge vs. Orton is WM worthy. The injury could explain why Edge is back, but won’t wrestle again before WM (if that’s what happens). My major problem with this is that two wrestlers can have a bit of a fight and referees and security comes out to break it up. That’s when two wrestlers are fighting each other. Where were they to stop Orton from severely injuring Edge? Where was the babyface roster? Someone should have come out to stop Orton. He gave them plenty of opportunity. That makes them all look bad. It makes the entire operation look scripted for having security only there when it fits the story and not when it doesn’t.
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.
>Bray Wyatt promised a new Firefly Funhouse character which never debuted.<
I was under the impression that the new character was Daniel Bryan after the Fiend tore his hair out and made him into a different person. Even Daniel admitted afterwards that the Fiend had changed him.