6 Ups & 3 Downs From WWE Raw (7 Oct - Results & Review)
Gunther survives Sami, Punk sells hell, Breakker returns to his badass ways.
If you watched WWE Bad Blood on Saturday and felt like a good chunk of it was subpar, you’re not alone.
While Raw provided the PLE’s best match of the night (and a Match of the Year contender) in CM Punk vs. Drew McIntyre in Hell in a Cell, it also offered up two Judgment Day rivalries that underperformed. WWE seemed to recognize this, as the Judgment Day (past and present members) were barely present on Raw on Monday night.
Instead, Raw’s first two-hour program in ages steamed along with a better offering than the weekend’s PLE, delivering a solid main event, some decent angle advancements, and a bruising Donnybrook match. Xavier Woods, Bron Breakker, Sami Zayn, and Seth Rollins all had good nights, while Punk sold the effects of his cell match perfectly as well.
However, the two-hour Raw was not without its challenges. Whether it was a case of agents not fully adjusting to the shorter runtime or just some bad decision-making, a couple of matches came off pretty badly, chopped up and consumed by commercials and left feeling superfluous to the program in some ways.
Raw avoided major pitfalls, which has been a hallmark of the past two years, thus making for a watchable and enjoyable episode, with a great opening and closing, and a fun brawl in the middle. That’s enough to merit positive overall marks.
Let’s get to it…