7 Ups And 5 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Sept 9)
5. Finally!
It took what seemed like an eternity, but WWE finally did something smart with the Viking Raiders.
After changing the wrestlers’ names, their team name (twice) and their gimmick, introducing and then ignoring them, and then putting them on an endless jobber parade, the company set Erik and Ivar loose on one of the better tag teams on the roster Monday night.
Luke Gallows & Karl Anderson interfered in AJ Styles’ match against Cedric Alexander, and the Viking Raiders stormed the ring and attacked, cleaning house and standing tall. It was a huge change of pace from the duo beating up two hapless, pasty jobbers and instead mixing it up with another pair of big boys. Later, they were part of the 10-man tag main event.
If this leads to a feud between the two teams, then that’s a great step in the right direction. The Raiders need to start fighting “name” teams if they’re going to hang around on Raw, and the crowd reaction showed fans were happy to see them get into the middle of things.