7 Ups & 4 Downs From WWE Raw (23 Sept - Results & Review)

Downs…

4. Blood Feud Comedown

For as fantastic as CM Punk’s promo last week was, it always carried a risk: it came too early in the lead-up to Bad Blood.

Punk’s subdued-but-deadly-serious promo sold his Hell in a Cell match against Drew McIntyre perfectly – almost too perfectly. With two episodes of Raw remaining before the PLE, the open question was what WWE could do to further build to the match, or more accurately, what they could do to not lose momentum.

The answer was a McIntyre promo that fell a bit short of its goal. The segment wasn’t bad at all, and Drew also spoke in a more subdued manner, talking about how his family and Punk’s family begged both wrestlers not to participate in the cell match, with Drew’s wife wanting him to separate from Punk for his mental health. He issued his own promises – of blood (a lot) and pain for Punk. He called out Punk’s God complex, and he vowed to break Punk as he’s done multiple times in the past.

On its own, this was fine. As a follow-up to Punk’s promo last week, this came off as a step down or a lateral move rather than an escalation. That might be by design – an intentional cooldown before ramping back up on the go-home Raw next week – but it didn’t have the same oomph that Punk’s promo had.

Calling this a “down” is a bit tough, but the bar was set really high last week, and this feud has bubbled back to the top in recent weeks. A lateral move at the penultimate stop before the blow-off match is a bit deflating, almost like WWE had an unaccounted week in the build and decided to tread water.