5 Ups And 6 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Oct 29)
A hard sell for Crown Jewel permeates subpar episode.
WWE continued its Imperial Stormtrooper march toward Friday’s PPV Crown Jewel on Monday night, with Raw running down the card multiple times and reminding us that it started at an odd hour – noon – but seemingly forgot to tell us the exotic location of this special event. That’s such an odd thing. Why would they ever omit that?
It remains to be seen what, if any, fallout there is from going ahead with the PPV. But it’s worth noting that John Cena officially pulled out of Friday’s event, and fans could be heard booing in the arena whenever Crown Jewel was mentioned. It’s clear that they’re going to continue to get negative press as well.
Perhaps the saving grace is that Survivor Series is right around the corner, so attention will likely turn to that next week and try to put Crown Jewel in the rearview mirror. But Monday, all focus was on the event, with an episode that was short on quality wrestling and heavy on hard sell.
We got a nice appearance from Trish Stratus and Lita, which was a bonus. Nia Jax got some screen time after her battle royal victory at Evolution. And Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose “confronted” each other, sort of.
It wasn’t a terrible episode, but it definitely wasn’t anything worth seeking out beyond recaps.
With that said, let’s get to it…