6 Ups & 4 Downs From WWE Raw (31 July - Review)

Judgment Day falters, Gable steps up, Brock/Cody have a misfire.

by Scott Carlson
Becky Lynch
WWE

With just days away from SummerSlam, WWE rolled into Monday Night Raw with the card mostly booked and just a couple outstanding questions: What would the stipulation be for Brock Lesnar/Cody Rhodes III? And would they make Becky Lynch/Trish Stratus official for Saturday?

The shocking thing was that neither of these questions received a positive answer. No stipulation was announced, and Trish/Becky actually “happened” Monday night before it was bumped two weeks to Raw in Winnipeg.

With that decided, how did the go-home Raw fare?

Overall, you’ve got to give passing marks on the strength of a few good matches, some good video packages, a better-than-expected in-ring confrontation between Logan Paul and Ricochet, and the potential for tension in the Judgment Day arrived at in a creative manner.

WWE overplayed its Cody/Brock hand a bit, though it shouldn’t diminish the overall vibe of this feud. Gunther and Chad Gable absolutely ruled the ring, but they pulled a bit of bait-and-switch with their own matchmaking. And seeing two former NXT Champions wrestle a total time-filler of a match was just depressing.

Still, SummerSlam should be really good this weekend, and they managed to not kill interest in the show.

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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.