5 Ups & 6 Downs From WWE Raw (10 Aug - Results & Review)
1. Who Are The Heels?
For all the “Acknowledge me” demands and fans putting their 1s to the sky, the original Bloodline undoubtedly were heels during their four-year run. It made it clear who was to be cheered and who were the villains during various feuds.
This incarnation of the Bloodline has had something of an identity crisis, and it really shone through Monday night.
Solo Sikoa opened Raw as the fan favorite, hanging out among the crowd and having fun with them at Jey Uso’s expense. Jey played his part well, too. So far, so good.
Fast-forward to the main event, and Jey entered through the crowd, doing his full babyface entrance. Wait, what? During the match, Uso did very little to distinguish himself as the heel, with brother Jimmy Uso’s distractions really being the only overt heel acts in a match where the stakes involved Jey trying to force his younger brother to return to the Bloodline against his will.
As a result, the crowd was dead for the first half of this match, really only coming alive when they started doing their signatures and approached the finish.
It was understandable in the early days of Bloodline 2.0 that they’d play tweeners rather than being out-and-out villains, but we’re now on the second indentured servant angle of this iteration, with Solo to be delivered to Roman Reigns next week after Jacob Fatu was forced to join the group earlier this summer.
At some point, the Bloodline needs to be identifiable as the heels. Right now, guys like Solo, LA Knight, and Seth Rollins keep saying that Roman and company are awful people, but the Samoans aren’t really giving fans a reason to buy that. Reigns is winning his matches clean, Jey is still yeeting, and Fatu is running through his catchphrases and being hard. Who would you cheer?