5 Ups & 5 Downs For WWE Raw (11 Aug - Results & Review)

3. The Right Guy for Rusev

Since his return, Rusev has struggled to gain his footing, mired in a string of underwhelming booking and reactions since the Raw after WrestleMania 41.

The Bulgarian Brute’s feud with Sheamus has been a mixed bag, producing good action, but not the kind of buzz he should be generating.

Enter, Sami Zayn.

Sami became entangled in the Rusev/Sheamus feud last week while trying to break up their backstage brawl. That led to Monday's match in Zayn's home province. Naturally, this meant that Sami got a tremendous reaction, and conversely, everything Rusev did was heavily booed -- and he leaned into that, waving at the fans and taunting them while pummeling their hero. It also helped that Zayn is a fantastic babyface-in-peril, which made Rusev look even more dominant.

Sadly, the match had to end in a disqualification involving the MFTs, but the overall impact was positive, with the ensuing Rusev/Sheamus brawl getting a pretty good reaction, since Rusev had spent 10 minutes beating up on Zayn.

Decent stuff here, but WWE needs to follow up to build on this.