7 Ups And 7 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Sept 14th)

The hotly anticipated Raw debut of an up-and-comer. Plus, Triple H dances.

By Scott Carlson /

Monday Night Raw was the final stop on the road to Night of Champions €“ save for a quick respite on Smackdown €“ with WWE€™s flagship show holding its now-annual €œseason premiere.€ The idea that Raw, a 52-week live program, has a season premiere is comical in some ways, but WWE needed to find some way to play up the program against a Monday Night Football double-header that€™s sure to cut into Raw€™s already-dwindling ratings. Raw also needed to bring things home for Night of Champions, the one PPV where all titles are on the line. WWE did a nice job building to the big matches for this Sunday, as even matches that were made official Monday night had been building to this money for at least a week or so. It didn€™t feel like anything was rushed or forced, save for the PPV kickoff match, and even that has a bit of a backstory. We saw John Cena wrestle twice, which is fine considering that he has been putting on solid matches with just about every opponent this year. We got a huge Raw debut that was funny on one hand €“ given the performer€™s stature and it being a debut €“ and really cool on the other. And we saw two title matches that more or less set up title defenses at NOC. So what strutted to victory, and what Flair-Flopped to the mat? Let€™s get to it€

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