3 Ups & 6 Downs From WWE Raw (July 11)

Drab show includes title match ending in countout, tag title challengers losing to giant.

Brock Lesnar
WWE.com

Welcome to Raw… is… DRAB.

When you finish watching a three-hour program, you should feel… something. Whether it’s sheer joy, anger, annoyance, frustration, elation, or exasperation, some emotional reaction is critical. Otherwise, what the hell did you just spend three hours watching?

But after sitting through Raw Monday night, it was difficult to not feel much of anything. Raw wasn’t terrible in the sense that the matches were bad, or the promos and storylines were embarrassing. They were just… there.

Even though this is a heavily negative review, the downs aren’t these massive critiques where you get all worked up to vent at 100 kph about how awful WWE is. It’s more of a malaise where you just shrug and say, “Well, that wasn’t impressive,” or “That was lackluster and boring.”

If you’re WWE, you should be striving to put on the best show possible, or at least something memorable. What is going to be remembered here in a week or two? Brock Lesnar’s appearance was nothing. The matches were inconsequential. Champions were inconsequential. Nothing was locked in for SummerSlam.

Raw was just there. And so were we, watching it happen. Next week, maybe we’ll spend three hours watching paint dry.

Let’s get to it…

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Contributor
Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.