3 Ups & 6 Downs From WWE Raw (Nov 21)

5. What Was The Opener Supposed To Be?

If you love promo trains that say very little and impromptu matches, then the opening segment was just for you.

Kevin Owens, who often can do no wrong, came out to explain why he returned last week on SmackDown to join the Brawling Brutes and Drew McIntyre to take on the Bloodline. Of course, if you’ve watched WWE programming for the past two years, you already know the answer, but WWE needs to spoon-feed the storylines to its audience.

This brought out his teammates, which somehow triggered The Judgment Day. And then this gave way to a six-man tag match because Finn Balor said some fightin’ words, and Sheamus decided that that should lead to a fight.

While the match itself was perfectly fine (more on that later), it takes five seconds to ask the question: What was supposed to follow KO’s promo and fill those 15 minutes that the match occupied?

Brawling Brutes versus Judgment Day could actually be a rivalry with some stakes or a storyline, but here, it was set up with a five-minute back-and-forth and burned out on free TV because Raw is three hours and we’ve got to fill it somehow.