-Well, it’s about damn time. WWE finally delivered a suitable Cody Rhodes and John Cena promo segment that actually facilitated the storyline put in place beginning at Elimination Chamber last month. The show opening mic battle between Rhodes and Cena was fascinating, fun, intriguing, and valuable to building up their main event match at WrestleMania, which is now less than three weeks away. The biggest piece of the puzzle this week was Cena telling Rhodes and the audience why he did what he did. Why did he turn bad after all these years? He answered that question for everyone. The near-meta scud missiles were close to being overly cute, but all played within the confines of the narrative at play. As for Cody Rhodes, he looked every bit on Cena’s level. Rhodes talking first with an Eminem-like rap battle defense made him look like an alpha babyface and when he needed to shoot his own meta scud missile back at Cena, he did it. Even The Rock was brought up and brought up in a way that tied him directly back into whatever is going to go down with three weeks to go. My guess is we won’t see much of John Cena before WrestleMania, but we’ll now get a heavy dose of The Rock playing his part in this madness. A thumbs up week for the company’s most important storyline heading into the biggest event of the year.
Bate’s back
-Good to see Tyler Bate back in the fold and healthy, but tagging with Pete Dunne is probably his ceiling in WWE at this point. Still, it was fun to see him work in London and they had a nice match with The New Day. New Day vs. War Raiders for the tag titles at WrestleMania is a smart mid-card match to book for one of the nights.
-Gunther vs. Jimmy Uso was ok, but the post-match massacre angle was fantastic. Gunther finally looked the part of a lethal killer heel again and Jimmy really helped his brother out in taking the beating that he did. Jey needed the big mountain to overcome and he found it with this segment. Emotional work from all involved and an injection of energy into a storyline that desperately needed it.
-Do we have to have another babyface hits his babyface partner in a tag match and that partner gets angry angle? Is this some kind of once every three month agreement that WWE has with itself? Penta, Bron Breakker did not mean to crush you with a spine breaking spear! Anyway, a multi-person match is still the move in the men’s Intercontinental Championship picture for WrestleMania. Breakker, Penta, Balor, and maybe a couple others will solidify that match.
-Strong heat for Logan Paul this week and Paul worked that heat efficiently to get over the match with AJ Styles at WrestleMania. Good segment, but nothing out of this world either.
Nonsense
-So, about that main event this week. The early part of the match when Iyo Sky and Rhea Ripley were going at it and wrestling was very good — as to be expected from those two women. Things in the match turned ridiculous the moment Bianca Belair got involved. She was hit by Ripley and then hit by Sky. Then Belair just disqualified both. Nonsense. The endgame for this entire thing was clearly a triple threat match between Sky, Ripley, and Belair. Trying to be cute with that story hurt the match and forced their hand into the ridiculousness that played out in this match. It wouldn’t have landed anyway, but everyone watching already knowing where it was going made it even worse. There are more clever and reasonable ways to get where they wanted to on this saga. Not once did they make the right call — this week included.
What did you think of this week’s episode of WWE Raw? Let us know in the comments!
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The Cena-Rhodes promo resonated well for a viewer who recalls well the days of Cena being booed heavily in the mid-2000s.