8 Ups and 7 Downs From WWE Raw (June 27)

1. Taboo Talk

After a week of wondering how WWE would address the wellness policy suspension of Roman Reigns, the company went right for it Monday night and didn’t pull any punches.

Seth Rollins opened Raw and almost immediately “went off script” and decided to talk about Roman, shrugging his shoulders and acknowledging that he wasn’t supposed to talk about him, but it was live TV and he had a mic. Rollins proceeded to run Reigns down as an embarrassment to him as the Architect of the Shield, then mocked Roman’s Twitter apology. He also tried to have Roman removed from the Battleground triple threat title match.

Give WWE credit for trying something different. It’s not normal to acknowledge a wellness policy violation in a storyline, especially in this manner. By having Rollins call him out (and Stephanie later call him out as well), WWE set the stage for the heels to be opposed to his actions, while faces like Dean Ambrose were willing to forgive him.

Considering the alternatives were to ignore Roman for four weeks or run an injury angle off-screen, this was a strange but effective resolution. It won’t work every time, but it seemed to work this time.