5 Ups And 11 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (May 27)
Shane McMahon 'wrestles' first match 53 minutes into show. Do the math.
There are bad episodes of Raw, and then there are episodes like Monday night’s program.
WWE came out the night after a well-received, highly praised AEW debut PPV and s*** the bed with Monday’s offering. The company didn’t need to directly respond to Double or Nothing, but the gauntlet had been thrown down, and they simply sidestepped it and acted as if nothing had changed.
In fact, they almost acted as if they didn’t care and deliberately put on the worst episode they could given the circumstances.
Consider that they had a hot crowd from the get-go, and then killed them off by going 53 minutes before the first match, which ended up being Shane McMahon versus Lance Anoa’i in a joke match. We also saw WWE promise us a fatal four-way elimination match, only to renege on the stipulation and instead give us Baron Corbin, WWE Universal Championship #1 contender.
We also got a new talking segment that bombed. Most of the Raw roster was preoccupied with a Memorial Day block party, so SmackDown wrestlers just invaded the red brand with reckless abandon, while other Raw wrestlers have seemingly vanished from sight.
Put it this way: This column is usually written as the episode unfolds, and edited, with items reordered accordingly afterward. Three or four times, it looked like the #1 Down was locked in, only to be upended.
Enough with the prologue. Let’s get to it…