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

7. Raiders Play Second Fiddle

samoa joe new day
WWE.com

One of WWE’s favorite tropes is to have a match breakdown, with others running in, only to restart it at a tag or multi-man match.

We got just that Monday night, when the Viking Raiders squared off against New Day for the first time. After a couple minutes of action, Samoa Joe ran out to attack Xavier Woods, triggering a DQ. Kofi Kingston ran out to defend his stablemates, and the six men had a staredown.

When we came back from commercial, we had a six-man tag match, despite there being no relationship between Joe and the Raiders (who hadn’t been acting as heels since coming up to the main roster).

While it’s great seeing the Raiders seemingly back in the mix on Raw, it was somewhat frustrating that they were used as furniture for Joe’s burgeoning feud against Kofi Kingston.

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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.