6 Ups & 6 Downs From WWE Raw (June 21)
MITB qualifiers, New Day/Lashley steer Raw in a good direction, but can it last?
What a difference giving a show an over-arching angle can make.
Monday Night Raw came off a lacklustre Hell in a Cell PPV and is careening toward the end of the Pandemic Era, so you had to wonder what kind of show we were getting. Almost immediately, WWE set the table for Money in the Bank by announcing five qualifying matches for the show, which put the entire program into focus and gave all the matches purpose and direction.
Then the opening segment sealed a MITB PPV world title match and the main event of Raw, a HIAC bout between Bobby Lashley and Xavier Woods. If you’re counting, that meant six matches were announced before the first segment was over, and a world title match for the next PPV was tapped. That’s very un-WWE-like.
Sure, there was the same drumbeat of stupidity we have to suffer through: Charlotte Flair and Rhea Ripley’s horrid feud continues, the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship is becoming the new 24/7 Championship (hey, what happened to that title?), and Nikki Cross debuted the most godawful new character/persona we’ve seen in a while.
But overall, we’re going to have to give this episode of Raw the show’s first passing marks in forever. Maybe it was the migraine, but this writer actually found this episode to fly by and be mostly enjoyable, with some good wrestling mixed in.
Who knows? Maybe it was the headache.
Let’s get to it…