7 Ups And 6 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Sept 19)
The cruiserweight arrive, a steel cage gets dropped and the List of Jericho is read to the masses.
After last week’s ratings freefall, you knew WWE had to try to deliver a big episode of Raw. We got two big matches in Rusev/Seth Rollins and Roman Reigns/Kevin Owens, but neither match carried any stakes (though the later match had a steel cage!), so it remains to be seen if those matches were enough to hook viewers at the beginning and end of the show.
Raw also saw the return of the cruiserweight division in WWE, though the company would have you believe this is an entirely new concept and that there wasn’t a Cruiserweight Championship in WWE previously. Still, the newcomers (if you want to include Brian Kendrick as a newbie) did a great job introducing fans to the fast-paced style.
With the Clash of Champions PPV on Sunday, this go-home episode of Raw did a nice job of lining up several matches, tying up loose ends fairly well. On paper, this could be a pretty good PPV, with a couple title changes possible (it might finally be the Big Dog’s time) and the conclusion to the Sheamus/Cesaro best-of-seven series, where we will see if the Swiss Superman can complete the comeback from down 3-0.
So what scaled the cage and what tumbled back to the mat? Let’s get to it…