6 Ups & 4 Downs From WWE Raw (14 August - Review)

3. Another Show-Opening Judgment Day Promo

Judgment Day
WWE.com

There’s a lot to love about the Judgment Day, and the group’s current strife is a central theme on Raw most Monday nights.

But the Bloodline they are not. And while the ongoing Finn Balor/Damian Priest tension might be good television, it doesn’t mean dominating WWE airwaves is the best avenue.

The now-clichéd Judgment Day show-opening promo threatened to delve into soap opera territory before interruptions from JD McDonagh (on Finn’s behalf) and Sami Zayn (to attack JD) took it back to WWE trope territory. And this gave us another trope, the impromptu match.

There are better ways to convey the dissonance between Priest and Balor than forced dialogue and an intermediary. The idea of McDonagh being sent out on Balor’s behalf was an interesting twist after Damian failed to keep the veil up that everything was OK. Maybe if everything else wasn’t so hackneyed, it wouldn’t have felt like a blob of WWE formula.

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Contributor
Contributor

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.