7 Ups And 8 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (June 17)

5. Getting Right To It

Seth Rollins Raw
WWE.com

One of the biggest – and fairest – criticisms leveled at WWE these days is the long, drawn-out opening segments that can last 15-20 minutes. Hell, it was just three weeks ago that Raw went 53 minutes before the first match began.

So for Raw to open with a four-minute opening segment that put Seth Rollins over, it was a dramatic shift. From there, the fatal five-man match put Ricochet into his first WWE title match, and had him fight back against notorious bully Samoa Joe. That gave way to Becky Lynch confronting Lacey Evans and taking her out.

All of that was in the first 45 minutes. While it wasn’t the best we’ve ever seen, contrast that with the Memorial Day Raw and its 53-minute snoozer to open the show. This was a vast improvement.

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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.