6 Ups And 6 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (July 8)
Consistency, better writing, but still some strange booking decisions.
Week 2 of the supposed new Heyman Era of Raw came and went Monday night, and there’s something notable right away: consistency.
Storylines from last week were followed up on, with actual storytelling and progression. That in and of itself is a huge improvement from previous efforts, where entire plotlines were dropped randomly, then suddenly restarted weeks later for now explored reason.
If this is a sign of things to come, we could see Raw turning a corner where it’s more watchable and linear, which itself is a big deal. One of the biggest criticisms WWE has faced is the lack of direction of the show. Another – the under-utilization of the roster – also appears to be under a course correction, as some wrestlers who haven’t gotten much screen time (Sarah Logan, Cedric Alexander, No Way Jose, the Kanellises) all got some camera time Monday night.
But we’re not ready to endorse this as the panacea to Raw’s plummeting ratings and creative doldrums. A couple decent weeks is just a blip on the radar. We’d need to see a lot of improvement over a longer period to be optimistic.
Besides, this episode included more of the contrived reasons to avoid wrestling during commercial breaks, a baffling mixed tag elimination stipulation, champs losing nontitle matches, and a bizarre main event storyline that missed the mark, big time.
With that said, let’s get to it…