5 Ups And 8 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Nov 4)

1. Raw Falls Flat

Pop quiz: Name one moment on Raw when the fans chanted, “This is awesome!” Answer: None.

No matter how bad Raw can be at times, you can almost always count on at least one really good match to entertain the fans and really suck them in, even in storyline-heavy episodes.

And let’s be honest, the in-ring action Monday night was pedestrian at best overall. None of the matches were bad, with Adam Cole/Seth Rollins being pretty good overall, but when a Long Island audience – typically one of your hotter crowds – is mostly muted in their response throughout the show, you’ve got problems.

Conversely, some of the angles were pretty good, with Becky Lynch/Shayna Baszler and Rey Mysterio attacking Brock Lesnar standing out. But a handful of strong moments is not going to salvage 180 minutes of Raw.

You would think WWE would want to come out firing Monday night to turn the page from a disastrous weekend of bad publicity, but everyone seemed to almost throttle it down instead. Look at Buddy Murphy and Cedric Alexander, who had a paint-by-numbers match that they basically sleepwalked through. Or Rusev against Drew McIntyre and then Bobby Lashley, where the Bulgarian Brute should be in a near-rage and is just projecting “angry.”

Watch NXT on Wednesday. Fair bet that they blow this show out of the water energy-wise.