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 fortunately became a fan in time for WrestleMania III and came back as a fan after a long high school hiatus before WM XIV. Monday nights in the Carlson household are reserved for viewing Raw -- for better or worse.