4 Ups & 8 Downs From WWE Raw (May 30)

1. A Huge Go-Home Sell

Contrast the Raw Women’s Championship half-hour segment with the promo battle and massive pull-apart brawl between Cody Rhodes and Seth Rollins and you’ll see the difference between a subpar sell and an all-out stellar one.

Rhodes was in the middle of a pretty decent little promo, talking about how he needed to win when he came back to WWE, and that he was going to leave his self-control behind when it came to Hell in a Cell on Sunday. But he was then interrupted by Rollins, who proceeded to finally deliver a meaningful and sensical promo from the crowd.

Rollins put it bluntly: he doesn’t like Cody and doesn’t want him in WWE. But then he explained: Rhodes panders too much to the fans, drawing their cheers and adulation, which Seth despises. He started in with the “you left here six years ago because you weren’t good enough” spiel, but he then alluded to AEW (“you and your little friends”) tried to tear down the WWE he had built, and when he couldn’t beat WWE, he came crawling back.

Seth even referenced Cody using a sledgehammer to smash a throne, which was a fantastic reference – and it worked in the context of the promo, rather than just being a cheap pop. But the highlight was Rhodes noting that there wasn’t some invisible wall preventing them from actually fighting, so they then had a massive pull-apart brawl that kept going and going, despite a dozen officials trying to break it up.

That, friends, is how you sell a PLE match.