6 Ups & 6 Downs From WWE Raw (4 Sept - Results & Review)

3. Booking On The Fly AGAIN

When Raw went on the air Monday night, they had a stellar main event announced, as well as a Texas Tornado tag team match on the docket. And that was it for a three-hour show.

During the course of the program, four more matches were made on the fly, as the “impromptu match” trope was in overdrive Monday night. Seth Rollins tried to get Shinsuke Nakamura to have a world title rematch, but he declined, instead getting stuck in a bout with Ricochet.

Shayna Baszler and Zoey Stark wanted to see who the “baddest woman on Raw” was, so rather than actually set it for next week and maybe build some interest, they wrestled to mostly silence. The match itself was a bit clunky, but the show of respect afterwards was a nice touch.

Raquel Rodriguez overheard Chelsea Green talking trash about her to Adam Pearce, so that became an impromptu squash. And Sami Zayn challenged Dominik Mysterio to a bout, but JD McDonagh stepped in and took the match instead.

It bears repeating every time WWE does this: What was going to happen if all these wrestlers didn’t have confrontations during the show? Was the Intercontinental Championship match going to be an Iron Man match? (That would have ruled, for what it’s worth.) Were there a bunch of standby matches that were scrubbed? Or would WWE just run a test pattern for the middle two hours?

Stop doing this. It’s lazy and unrealistic. Fans should expect better from WWE.