7 Ups & 8 Downs From WWE Raw: In Your Face (Sep 14)

1. Goldfish Booking

Goldfish Booking is when WWE take you, the viewer, for somebody without an attention span, calling on you to dumb yourself down, lower your standards, and make massive logic leaps when watching Raw or SmackDown. They dismiss your intelligence to the point that they routinely do away with important plot points in the hope that you'll forget about them, like a goldfish. Here, it was on full display.

Keith Lee and Drew McIntyre worked a solid big boy battle. They brought the heat from their backstage segments to the ring and beefed the tenderloin off each other, looking like they were en route to a good Raw main event. Very meaty, very macho, and very satisfying... until RETRIBUTION happened. Again!

About 12 mask-clad goobers hit the ring and started laying into Lee and McIntyre. The Hurt Business ran out to join the fight and it was death by a thousand camera cuts as Kevin Dunn went nuts on production, delivering a headache-inducing viewing experience. Lee and McIntyre then hit tandem dives over the top rope to wipe everyone out for the close.

Problems? This had 'em.

1. Mia Yim was attacking her onscreen boyfriend, mere weeks after teaming with him to face Candice LeRae and Johnny Gargano. Disregard John Pollock's doubtlessly accurate report on Yim being part of RETRIBUTION here. That doesn't matter, as the NXT wrestler was clearly behind one of the masks in the earlier promos - which should have been apparent to anyone with a working set of eyes. You, the viewer, saw this. There's your first logic leap.

2. Dominik Dijakovic was part of this as well. Remember when Lee saved his apparent "best friend in the business" from Karrion Kross a short while ago? Logic leap number two.

3. The Hurt Business as valiant babyface saviour hero guys, on the very same show they ganged up on Apollo Crews and Ricochet, having just indoctrinated Cedric Alexander. Nonsense! And logic leap number three.

4. RETRIBUTION falling in their first major show-closing brawl since becoming Raw-exclusive. Not necessarily a logic leap, but a sh*tty look regardless.

This whole deal was an omnishambles. Fans shouldn't have to disconnect their brains to make sense of what they're consuming and WWE should have more regard for said fans.