5 Ups & 4 Downs From WWE Raw (1 Jun - Results & Review)
Fatu acknowledges Roman, Oba bounces back, Rollins/Breakker drags on, King and Queen tourneys begin.
After a hugely disappointing Clash in Italy, WWE was back at it 24 hours later with an episode of Raw that served as a modest improvement, bolstered mainly by a couple of promos and a smart decision to heavily promote a match that didn’t even take place on WWE programming.
Raw kicked off with Jacob Fatu doing the right thing and honoring the stipulation of Tribal Combat, making a point that he was following through to show his children that he was a man of his word, which oddly enough sets Fatu up to be the conscience of the new Bloodline. Look for Jey Uso to push buttons as the fully bought-in toady.
Oba Femi should never have lost at Clash, but if you can separate that from Monday’s King of the Ring tournament opening match, the Ruler had a very good night Monday. Unfortunately, the women did not have as strong of an opening in the Queen of the Ring tournament.
LA Knight surprisingly had a strong evening, berating Raw GM Adam Pearce for allegedly being a Bloodline sympathizer and enabler. It sounds crazy in writing, but the segment worked.
Perhaps the smartest move WWE made was to dedicate a decent amount of Raw to promote the AAA mask versus mask match between the two El Grande Americanos, finally giving proper context to the feud and then airing the full match (and pageantry and post-match unmasking) while informing fans that this was one of the best matches in a good while (which surprisingly was not typical WWE hyperbole).
Once again, a Raw main event involving the Vision was overly long, standard, and competently dull (or is it dully competent?).
Overall, this was a decent episode when compared to Clash in Italy, but the product remains in desperate need of a reinvigoration. Oba Femi is a wonderful jolt, but he even can’t electrify 10 segments a week.
Let’s get to it…