6 Ups And 6 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (May 15)
3. Exposition For The Sake Of It
WWE loves its show-opening promos. They really love promos to open Raw. When was the last time the show opened with an actual match?
The big promo at the top of the show can set the tone for the entire night. It can be gold and lay everything out, or it can fall flat and leave Raw with a hole to climb out of. Monday night, we started with GM Kurt Angle announcing that Braun Strowman was injured and that he needed to find a #1 contender for Brock Lesnar’s Universal Championship. So, he announced a fatal five-way match for Extreme Rules, naming all the participants.
And then, each wrestler walked out one at a time to deliver a brief monologue before a brawl ensued. It was almost a paint-by-numbers segment that we’ve seen 1,000 times, but in a weird reversal, with Angle announcing the participants before they sauntered out. We got the setup, and then we got the brawl.
It felt like they actually got down to the business of making matches too quickly and needed to fill five minutes with talking before they could have a fight.