-CM Punk cut a strong promo on Seth Rollins and Paul Heyman to start the show, but once they got to brawling, the crowd was a little too quiet. WWE is paying for making their audience choose sides for Rollins vs. Punk back when they were both babyfaces and now the audience doesn’t know what to do. Both Sami Zayn and Jey Uso running in for the save got much stronger reactions than Punk got while brawling. Something to watch for and why you don’t do babyface vs. babyface in an undefined way.
Sell more
-I’d have liked to see Pat McAfee sell his match with Gunther more. He’s an announcer for god sake! The fallout of the Backlash match has been ineffective at best. Gunther is showing respect to McAfee? Since when does Gunther do that to anyone? His entire character is rooted in the disrespect of others because of how much better than everyone he thinks he is. It’s silly. As for McAfee, all of a sudden you respect the guy that beat you and your best friend, Michael Cole, up? It’s baffling and we should all be glad it’s over.
-Penta defeated Chad Gable in a fine match, but we all know what’s coming. El Grande Americano vs. Penta. Queue it up!
-Can we just get on with The Judgment Day story already? If WWE just read the room, it’s clear that the audience wants Dom as a babyface. The slow play of his turn is smart in theory because you get content out of it, but it’s distracting for Dom to get cheered the way he does, but go along with heel shenanigans at the same time. Pull the trigger.
Log jam
-There is upside in The Creed Brothers if WWE ever decides to truly push the tag team division. However, it’s crowded at the top with The New Day as heel champions. The Creed’s beating The War Raiders signals they are in line for a title shot down the road, which isn’t great due to the fact that they are heels like the champions are.
-So, Gunther is getting his world championship rematch on the June 9 episode of WWE Raw and it will be against the winner of Jey Uso vs. Logan Paul at Saturday Night’s Main Event on May 24. That works. Yes, we likely will get another Gunther vs. Jey match, but it’s Raw and my guess is WWE will use this as a means to introduce Goldberg into the mix for showdown against Gunther at Summerslam.
Secret sauce
-Jey Uso getting assaulted by Bron Breakker was a secretly strong part of the show this week. Bron looked like a bad ass, but better than that, it showcased an environment where the champion is taking on everyone and involved in a variety of different stories with top guys. Jey Uso now has stories brewing with Logan Paul, Seth Rollins, and Gunther. It keeps the title picture fresh and paints a picture of the world title as the most important thing on the show that everyone is striving to secure.
-Did Finn Balor vs. AJ Styles need to be nearly 20 minutes long? It really didn’t. That said, it was a good match, but yet another with outside interference getting involved in the finish. Thanks a lot, Penta.
-Now THAT was a Becky Lynch promo. Tremendous. Lynch set up her storyline with virtually anybody in the Raw women’s division because of what she said about holding them all down. Loved it.
-I didn’t love Lyra Valkyria not being on the show this week. Beating Lynch is a huge deal and she should have been on hand to talk about it with fans that are slowly migrating over to her. She’s at a point in her run where she needs to capitalize on moments like the one she had at Backlash. She needs the momentum of fans seeing her regularly, so their interest and investment in her doesn’t wane.
Nothing comes free for NXT
-A tremendously strong main event from an in-ring perspective, but if you didn’t know it before, you know it now. Top NXT talent like Roxanne Perez and Guilia won’t be just handed stuff on the main roster. This is good and bad. Sometimes the star calls for a strong main roster debut. Perez and Guilia are both stars that would have deserved that type of strong initial push. It’s not over for them by any stretch of the imagination, but they are firmly in the lane of WWE traffic rather than flying along above it.
What did you think of this week’s episode of WWE Raw? Let us know in the comments!
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