4 Ups & 10 Downs From WWE Raw (June 14)
Ripley/Asuka AGAIN, McIntyre a smug jerk, New Day & RK-Bro light it up.
It’s hard to believe it, but Raw on Monday night marked a decent improvement from recent weeks’ efforts. The in-ring product was overall better, a couple of angles were booked decently, and some of the big negatives of recent weeks were diminished or at least downplayed some.
Still, Raw remains a mess of a show, where the writing is repetitive, lazy and uninspired. It continues to feel like it’s treading water until the fans return next week, though it really remains to be seen whether the show can get itself out of the doldrums when fans do return. If they can’t, WWE might find itself in a really bad situation, with crowds thinning out quickly as they find better things to do with their time.
Would you want to sit through the fourth Asuka/Rhea Ripley match in two months? Or a Jaxson Ryker/Elias rematch that ends with the same count-out result? Or a retirement match thrown out there with zero build-up and zero suspense? Or a feud in which it’s impossible to determine who’s the face? Or the brand’s top babyface dusting off rejected John Cena lines in 2021?
But that’s where we are today, and it’s really scary to call this an improvement when it’s barely watchable. Still, we’ll slog on, if only out of morbid curiosity for how the fans treat this drek when they return next month.
Let’s get to it…