7 Ups And 10 Downs From WWE Raw's Season Premiere (Sept 30)

1. WWE Does Realize AEW Debuts This Week, Right?

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WWE.com

This week is an absolutely critical one for WWE.

The company’s two flagship shows, Raw and SmackDown, are essentially re-launching themselves, with new theme songs, new logos, new stages, and in SmackDown’s case, a new network. A new rival promotion, AEW, is debuting on Wednesday, trying to pry eyes away from the wrestling juggernaut.

So with Raw billed as the “season premiere” Monday night, WWE had an opportunity to really draw fans in and put down a marker for comparison to AEW’s debut episode.

The result? A hugely disappointing program that fell far short in multiple categories. Ric Flair and Hulk Hogan showed up, but the three title matches collectively didn’t deliver fireworks, and the in-ring action and storylines slogged along.

Unless you count Hogan and Flair “coaching” two five-man teams to battle in a tag match at Crown Jewel (a positive, but hardly Earth-shattering) and Bobby Lashley making out with Lana, there weren’t any colossal developments Monday night.

This episode should have hit it out of the park, and they were content to play small ball all night.

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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 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.