7 Ups And 5 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Sept 9)

Austin drinks beer, Alexander triumphs, Corbin aggravates.

stone cold steve austin aj styles
WWE.com

WWE returned to its “spiritual home” Monday night for Raw, with the flagship show broadcasting from Madison Square Garden. And while they didn’t go over the top to play that up, we did get a few reminders of the world’s most famous arena.

“Stone Cold” Steve Austin told a couple short stories about his matches in the Garden, and the cameras shot a couple nice scenes from inside the arena. You could also tell people were amped for the show, with the wrestling being mostly crisp, and promos being on-point. Overall, this was a really solid episode of Raw, with only a couple really notable negatives.

The biggest red flag of the night had to be the King of the Ring tournament, as we’ve seen a potentially star-making moment being potentially handed to someone who has already squandered and failed at numerous attempts to get over with fans. It’s like Billy Gunn 2.0, but this time, the wrestler moonlights as an Olive Garden waiter!

Clash of Champions might be really good, and it might be just OK. There’s a Universal Championship match, but the feud over the title has really been muted, making it tough to get invested into it. But we’ll go into it with an open mind.

With that said, 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.