6 Ups And 8 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (July 1)

2. New Direction(?), New Energy

Braun Strowman
WWE.com

While not everything that was thrown at the wall stuck Monday night, we have to give credit to WWE for trying some different stuff.

Raw set a new tone immediately Monday by kicking off with the Braun Strowman/Bobby Lashley match, complete with pyro and explosions. We saw Samoa Joe look strong heading into his world title shot. The storytelling with Drake Maverick and AJ Styles was good throughout the show. And shorter matches and segments meant that more fit into the program.

You can’t accuse Monday’s Raw of being boring or more of the same. While not a ton really worked, we’ll give credit her to WWE for trying different things, and encourage them to keep it up going forward.

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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.