10 Things We Learned From Post-Payback WWE Raw (May 1)

Sunday's Payback pay-per-view was not a banner night for WWE's post-WrestleMania campaign, with a host of creative malfunctions and an instantly infamous theatrical misstep hamstringing an otherwise enjoyable wrestling show.

Performers from Monday Night Raw made up the bulk of the troubled card, but weren't to blame for the catastrophic 'House of Horrors' match that dropped an atomic bomb on the San Jose crowd that were already reeling from Bayley's Women's Title loss to Alexa Bliss..

For a company that has inadvertently serviced it's audience with the finest array of quality and quantity thanks to the WWE Network and a diverse package of televised output, Payback appeared to be wantonly abusive to a live crowd paying top dollar to watch cod-horror on a big screen whilst mourning devastating defeat for their hometown hero.

Seth Rollins, Samoa Joe (and to a lesser extent) Braun Strowman and Roman Reigns were all caught in the crossfire of the rancid hour of sports entertainment masochism, whilst the efforts of The Hardy Boyz, Sheamus, Cesaro, Kevin Owens and Chris Jericho were largely forgotten in the aftermath of Randy Orton and Bray Wyatt's fridge-centric disaster.

With the clumsy April show finally out of the way, could the company atone for the previous evening's shambles and get the struggling flagship back on track? Here are 10 things we learned from April 1st's post-Payback edition of Monday Night Raw.

The bulk of the Cruiserweight Division looked to syphon some of the Monday Night Raw heat from the league's topliners in a multi-man match that signified everything wrong with WWE's current presentation of the lightweights.

Whilst TJP and Austin Aries contested an absorbing encounter grounded with the levity of storyline heft and their differing relationships with champion Neville, the remaining field were thrown into a ten minute six-man tag match that was handcuffed by restholds until an exhilarating final stretch.

The silences that soundtrack the dull exchanges between these talented athletes makes the the entire experience of watching the Cruiserweights exhausting, and it's an unfair presentation of performers that can clearly dazzle and delight when the shackles are removed.

WWE love to trumpet WCW's cruiserweight division as a Nitro hotspot during their endless Monday Night War specials, but would benefit from actually watching a match to see why the performances drew such praise.

Virtually all six individuals did something worthy of generating the requisite 'oohs' and 'ahhs' from the live crowd in the final minute or so of the battle, but the insistence on nine minutes of WWE-lite build-up work will ultimately be the division's undoing beyond two or three top talents destined to escape it.