6 Ups And 6 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (July 30)
The stale city.
With Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania as this week's host city, Monday Night Raw's latest stop on the Road to SummerSlam (patent pending) hit the home base of some key players on the flagship show, with an unusual amount of attention paid to the location as and when it serviced a creative need.
For General Manager Kurt Angle, it represented an emotional return with (yet) another child in tow, stage managed by fellow native and trusted confidant Corey Graves, soundtracking the broadcast with his typical panache. The re-christened 'Elias' was forced to turn on his own locale in the chase for heat, but a determined location at least provides a logical reason why he's no longer a 'Drifter'.
In truth, he's perhaps the only midcarder still floating aimlessly, with most of WWE's SummerSlam programmes now clearly established with or without an official announcement and/or gentrified match graphic. Not that the combatants have a lot left to do before August 20th. Spoiled for supercards to build towards thanks to the WWE Network's over-service, the need for creative shortcuts has been exposed with a longer road to travel before reaching each central conflict's final destination.
Buoyed by a Samoa Joe, Roman Reigns and Braun Strowman triple threat match boasting enormity in every sense of the word, the show offered the North East hotbed plentiful helpings of acton where it counted, but left most stories on the treadmill, with the exception of an opening segment that ultimately flattered to deceive.
Downs...
6. Stilted
Kurt Angle opened Monday Night Raw in front of a partisan crowd as a native Pittsburgher, not least in noting how the date marked 21 years since he won his Olympic Gold Medal at the 1996 Atlanta Games.
His first time back on television in front of the hometown crowd brought with it less emotion than his excellent portrayals of reconciliation with his newfound son Jason Jordan, but did provide the familiar speech flubs that are becoming increasingly common in his weekly addresses.
Alongside his apparent inability to pronounce 'WWE', Angle this week bodged Braun Strowman's name as well as playing into a longstanding meme by referring to a fellow SummerSlam main eventer as 'Raman' Reigns.
Former General Manager Mick Foley was pilloried on-screen and off for his various slip-ups, but the response to Angle's routine verbal hiccups has been presumably kinder due to the widespread knowledge of an intensely physical career and the dreaded personal demons that have perhaps stunted his once-superlative verbal prowess.
Each little error does however serve to airlift the viewer from their delicately suspended disbelief, so a return to form sooner rather than later for the GM will hopefully avoid him suffering his own Foley-esque castration.