7 Ups & 6 Downs For WWE Raw (21 July - Results & Review)

4. Bad Booking Tropes Surface

Even under new leadership, WWE still has several tropes that crop up repeatedly. Some are worse than others, and when they rear their ugly heads, fans cringe.

Raw boasted not just one, but two of these booking tropes in the first hour.

First (and most egregiously), fans got the “Can they coexist?” tag title match with Lyra Valkyria and Bayley teaming up a week after Valkyria won a singles match between the two for a Women’s Intercontinental Championship match at SummerSlam. This made zero sense – so Bayley ran into Adam Pearce’s office and was granted a title match on her and Lyra’s behalf, despite not tagging for more than three months? Sure.

Nevermind that Lyra has a title match already at SummerSlam. If they had won Monday night, she and Bayley would have had to defend the titles against Alexa Bliss and Charlotte Flair. This was booking a strange bedfellows match without any rhyme or reason. They could have had Bayley approach Lyra “earlier today” and make peace and ask that they vie for the titles they never contested, but instead, we got this slop.

A lesser sin came a full hour into Raw, when Iyo Sky and Stephanie Vaquer exchanged some pained dialogue backstage that led to a challenge and an impromptu match later that night. WWE doesn’t book as many of these as they once did, but the presence of impromptu matches booked an hour into a two-and-a-half-hour program is still ridiculous.