7 Ups & 5 Downs From WWE Raw (6 May - Results & Review)

by Scott Carlson

1. Ilja’s Coming Out Party

Ricochet Ilja Dragunov
WWE

Ilja Dragunov received a spotlight on Raw the night after WrestleMania 40, but he had his real coming out party Monday night when he and Ricochet went to war in the first round of the King of the Ring tournament.

The match started innocently enough with the two men trading shots and hitting some signature spots (Ricochet’s standing Shooting Star Press, Ilja’s German suplexes and strikes). It seemed like it was going to be a perfectly acceptable mid-card filler match with polite applause and then immediately forgotten.

But the second half of the match hit a different gear and didn’t throttle down until after the pinfall. Ricochet hit a springboard avalanche hurricanrana to get things going, then dove to the floor repeatedly as Ilja tried to seek shelter. Dragunov came back with a Constantine Special and diving senton that looked like it seriously hurt. They traded kicks and chops until Ricochet got a rolling DVD and Lionsault for a close two, only for the Mad Dragon to come back with a running knee.

They still had more in the tank though, with Ricochet hitting a Poison Rana, and then Dragunov seemingly shut the door by counting a Lionsault with a punch, nailing an H-Bomb and going for Torpedo Moscow – only for Ricochet to counter with a Recoil for another two count.

Dragunov would finally put the match away with a superplex and H-Bomb, punching his ticket to the second round and closing out a surprisingly fun and excellent TV match. The fans, who were hit-or-miss most of the night, were alive for a great portion of this contest.

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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.