4 Ups & 8 Downs From WWE Raw (Sep 29)

1. McIntyre Spoils Roode’s Return

As surprises go, Robert Roode returning to WWE after a lengthy hiatus was a pretty good one, and one that made perfect sense given that he was traded to the Raw roster earlier this summer with Dolph Ziggler, who advocated for him to get the WWE Championship open challenge.

However, Drew McIntyre wasn’t going to lose his world title to a guy who was in a middling tag team before he took a break. But that didn’t mean we weren’t going to get a good match out of it. Roode looked older suddenly – like he aged in the face by five years since we last saw him – but he was still crisp in the ring, and he gave Drew a run for his money.

But it was McIntyre and his Claymore that felled Roode in the end (much like how McIntyre ended Roode’s NXT Championship reign three years ago). The nice little part was that the champ sold his injuries afterwards, rather than just popping up and holding his neck or something dumb like that, which is something Randy Orton will do after taking a beating and hitting an RKO (outta nowhere) for the win.

Good match, good surprise. Now let’s see how they waste Roode on the roster.