9 Ups And 6 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Aug 19)
King of the Ring kicks off; Banks silently lashes out; New champs crowned.
The optimism of last week surrounding the return of the King of the Ring tournament was not misplaced.
WWE kicked off its first KOTR tourney in more than four years Monday night by doing everything right: good in-ring action, clean finishes, acknowledgement of history, selling importance and significance of winning, and interviewing a past winner. That’s smart, and if it’s continued throughout the entire tournament, it’ll make winning it feel that much more special
Raw itself was good, with solid in-ring action, some storyline advancement and minimal bumps in the road. Even some of the downs this week are more minor gripes that can be corrected rather than the fatal flaws that inhabited this column in the weeks and months prior.
It’s still too early to say that Raw has turned a corner and is on the full upswing, but the show has been consistently better as Paul Heyman has spent more time influencing the program. That can’t be by accident or coincidence.
We still have a ways to go, but we also should continue to acknowledge the positive trends while calling attention to the hiccups.
With that said, let’s find out what worked and what stumbled. Let’s get to it…