5 Ups & 5 Downs From WWE Raw: Day 1 (Results & Review)
Rock returns, Rollins rolls, Awesome Truth reunites, Ivy Nile arrives. A good, but flawed show.
On paper, three good-to-great matches and the surprise return of The Rock should make for a home run of a WWE Raw, correct?
Well, yes and no.
Day 1 Raw was a good offering in that it gave fans two really good title matches and a fantastic grudge match that would be fun to revisit down the line. The episode also delivered on Triple H’s promise of a “former WWE champion” returning to the fold, and he made sure to make some news while he was in town.
But Raw also produced some completely skippable material, including the reunion of the Awesome Truth, which was about as mind-blowingly stupid of a self-own as WWE could produce. Rather than being a Mega Powers-adjacent reunion, it just reminded fans of how dire 2011 WWE really was.
Cody Rhodes seemed… distracted to say the least, which given The Rock’s promo was understandable. But that didn’t help his segment in any way. And Rock’s promo material was C- at best but elevated with his usual A delivery.
As a special episode of Raw, Day 1 was fine, and it certainly was newsworthy, which is probably more important than the show itself being remembered fondly. Overall, there were enough good moments here to overcome the skippable ones, but that’s only if you’re able to fast-forward through the dreck.
Let’s get to it…