5 Ups And 7 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (June 11)

Raw limps toward Money In The Bank with good matches, creatively on fumes.

Bayley RAW
WWE.com

The final Raw before a PPV can go one of a couple ways: it can feel rushed if they’re still booking matches left and right; it can be drawn out and boring because everything is booked too early; or it can feel just right, with angles peaking just before the PPV.

Sadly, Monday wasn’t the latter option, but the second. With six weeks between PPVs, the writers had run out of steam by this week, resorting to two fatal four-way matches to fill a lot of time, and then a couple of nonsensical matches (Bayley versus Ruby Riott) rather than building up other matches more. More importantly, most rivalries just continued going through the motions, including the Raw Tag Team Championship feud and the ongoing “uncrowned champion” Roman Reigns and Jinder Mahal business. However, Seth Rollins and Elias are having a solid feud, and their match could be must-see on Sunday.

WWE creativity seems to be bottoming out every year, but this was more paint-by-numbers than real writing. Oh, and Brock Lesnar broke a record by sitting at home and doing nothing. So, yay for all the wrestlers out there "grinding" every night. With that said, let’s find out what raced ahead and what stumbled out of the blocks.

Let’s get to it…

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Contributor
Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fortunately became a fan in time for WrestleMania III and came back as a fan after a long high school hiatus before WM XIV. Monday nights in the Carlson household are reserved for viewing Raw -- for better or worse.