5 Ups & 4 Downs from WWE Raw (16 June - Results & Review)

3. A More Grounded Affair

WWE Raw AJ Styles JD McDonagh
WWE

When you put AJ Styles and JD McDonagh in the ring together in their first singles match, you naturally assume they’re going to have a ground-based match that avoids taking to the air a bunch, right?

Of course not.

Both men have an array of aerial offense that they could unleash at any point, but they managed to keep their grappling mostly on the mat on Monday night, with both men working headlocks and trading rollups in the early going before Styles caught JD with a Calf Crusher. This led to one of the very few high spots of the night: Dominik Mysterio got involved, so AJ chased him, only for McDonagh to catch him by leaping over the barricade to clobber Styles.

The finish saw McDonagh attempt his Devil Inside suplex, only for AJ to block and turn it into a Styles Clash for the win. Afterward, he managed to repel a Mysterio attack, with Finn Balor arriving just in time to save Dirty Dom. Styles escaped a Judgment Day ensnarement to close the segment.

This match isn’t going to land on anyone’s “best of” list for the month, or possibly even the week, but it was a perfectly enjoyable little TV match.

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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.