Last night’s Raw didn’t do a whole lot to set the world on fire. In many ways it felt like a pre-Brand Split edition of WWE’s flagship show, and not a very good one at that. For what was supposed to be the go home show for SummerSlam, it never really reached levels above anything other than “solid”. Saying that, there were some good moments, but also more than a few headscratchers, let’s get into it.
The Man vs. The Demon King
The biggest mistake of the night in the eyes of many, WWE played their hand too early and gave us Finn Bálor’s alter ego on free television. Whether it was Vince not having confidence in the upcoming Universal Championship bout between Rollins and Bálor having intrigue or creative trying to avoid a repeat of last week’s segment, it was still the wrong call. A lot of the mystique surrounding “The Demon King” is now lost, as not everyone watches NXT and truly didn’t know what to expect come SummerSlam. I’m still curious to see just how grandiose Finn’s entrance will be this Sunday, but I don’t agree with the choice to debut Bálor’s darker side before the pay-per-view.
The “balls” are in New Day’s court
Well, it’s safe to say that basing the entire New Day vs. Gallows and Anderson feud around jokes relating to the testicles is a bit of a weird choice. We were treated to yet another segment in which “Dr. Gallows and Dr. Anderson” regaled us with various puns that directly referenced Big E’s two best friends (and I’m not talking about Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods).
Each team essentially competed in squash matches, with New Day taking care of the Dudley Boyz in quick fashion and Gallows and Anderson doing the same thing to the Golden Truth. New Day then got the sneak attack and were ready to deliver a shot to the nether regions on Anderson before Gallows pulled him out of the ring. It was okay, but the lack of any length or real meaning to the tag team matches sort of threw the division under the bus. Having no decent tag team matches in a feud over the Tag Team Championship is a cardinal sin that is hard to forgive.
Rusev and Roman wasted
Despite Rusev carrying himself well on the mic during the opening segment of the show, WWE decided to give away even more of SummerSlam’s offerings away for free. You thought seeing Demon Bálor was bad? Try giving away an entire SummerSlam match on Raw. That’s right, the main event of the show was Roman Reigns vs. Rusev to “defend Lana’s honour”, whatever that means. I wasn’t aware that honour was a stipulation in wrestling. Not only was it bad to showcase this match less than a week before SummerSlam, the match itself was an overlong snoozefest. The final ten minutes was just false finish after false finish, only for Roman to go over clean. What was the point in this? There’s now zero suspense for the clash between these two on Sunday. It’s now been established that Roman can not only beat Rusev, but that he can do it with an injured arm as Rusev assaulted him backstage before the match began. This was a major misfire and a poor main event heading into SummerSlam.
Brock Lesnar hates kids
Unsurprisingly, the most entertaining moment of the night involved Brock Lesnar suplexing someone to space. The unlucky recipient of this beat down was none other than the self-proclaimed “hottest free agent in sports entertainment today”, Heath Slater. This segment accomplished two things brilliantly. First of all, it managed to hype up Brock’s match with Randy Orton without having a predictable brand invasion from the latter. And secondly, Heath Slater’s quest to gain a spot on the Raw or SmackDown roster continued without falling into the realm of repetition. Slater claimed to have been offered to fight Lesnar in exchange for a contract, and was quick to bring up his ever-changing number of kids to feed in order to garner some sympathy. To everyone’s surprise, Brock grabbed the mic himself and told Heath that he could appreciate that, as he has kids of his own.
The pleasantries didn’t last though, as Brock shattered the PG rating by telling Slater to his face “I don’t give a shit about your kids”. Vince probably had a heart attack backstage, but you can hardly say no to Brock Lesnar, can you? Brock followed up with some brutal German suplexes that Slater sold as if he’d been fired out of a cannon, then there was an F-5 for good measure. The fact this wasn’t just another “Paul Heyman says the exact same thing and Brock just stands there looking mean” moment was refreshing, and kudos to Heath Slater for making Brock look like the absolute beast he is. The best part of the show, with some good comedy and a patented trip to Suplex City.
The smaller stuff
– There was very little for the women to do this week, which is a crying shame. There were two matches and they were both essentially squashes. Nia Jax destroyed yet another local talent and Charlotte took out Alicia Fox in less than five minutes. There was some solid storytelling between Sasha Banks and Charlotte though as Charlotte locked in the Figure Four to potentially damage the champ’s leg. Hopefully this is followed up in their match on Sunday.
– Big Cass picked up a disqualification victory over Kevin Owens after being attacked by Chris Jericho. What followed was a fairly standard heel beatdown and despite my vested interest in both teams, it’s hard to really have any stakes in this match given the fact that it probably won’t lead to any long term storylines.
– We learned that Cesaro and Sheamus will begin a best of seven series at SummerSlam. It doesn’t really mean a whole lot, but at least Cesaro has something to do. Maybe the winner gets some kind of title shot, who knows?
– The Prime Time Players had a brief reunion before a misunderstanding led to them taking a loss to the biggest flop of the year in the Shining Stars. Looks like Darren Young and Titus O’Neil will have a pre-show match at SummerSlam, although it seems like a cheap repeat of the first time they feuded.
– Jon Stewart will be at SummerSlam again this year. Here’s hoping he doesn’t nail Bálor with a chair or something.
– Strowman was only present in video package form. Does this mean they want to evolve him from squashing local talent or are they just worried we’ll get bored of him?
Overall
A highly unmemorable show that didn’t do enough to truly get me hyped for SummerSlam. Thankfully, the card is strong enough that it didn’t need a great go home show, but it still would have been nice. Let’s hope that SmackDown isn’t at the same level or it could be a very poor week for WWE.
Some of the coverage you find on Cultured Vultures contains affiliate links, which provide us with small commissions based on purchases made from visiting our site. We cover gaming news, movie reviews, wrestling and much more.
