By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
WWE Raw Hits
Damian Priest and Finn Balor vs. Julius Creed and Brutus Creed for the Undisputed WWE Tag Team Titles: A strong match with a ballsy clean finish. It would have been easy to make the challengers look strong before the champions got themselves disqualified or counted out, but they actually gave the Priest and Balor a clean win. Most importantly, it was done in a way that made the Creeds look really strong in defeat. There’s no shame in the storylines for a young team to lose to the tag team champions. The Creeds took the clean loss and yet came out of this looking like real players in the tag team division. On a side note, the Brutus Ball is a rough finisher. The move started as something that Brutus did to opponents at ringside and the wear and tear on his body would have taken years off his career. The in-ring version is tougher on the person taking the move. Brutus appeared to land on Damian Priest’s head last night, and he previously appeared to land on Giovanni Vinci’s ribs. Is it worth it?
Gunther vs. The Miz for the Intercontinental Title: A match worthy of a premium live event. In fact, this bout was longer and more enjoyable than the match they had at Survivor Series. The Miz babyface run has gone well in that the crowds are behind him. I’m curious to see what’s next for Gunther. For that matter, I’m also curious to see where Miz goes from here now that he can no longer challenge for the Intercontinental Title per the stipulation of this match. Well, unless they randomly decide to tell us that this wasn’t a real stipulation either (more on that later).
Ivar vs. Akira Tozawa: A soft Hit. The match succeeded in that it allowed Tozawa to get some offense while also putting over Ivar strong in the end. Tozawa showed heart in a match that was more competitive than I anticipated and yet Ivar still managed to maintain his monster status.
Jey Uso vs. Ludwig Kaiser: A basic spotlight match for Jey, who continues to be one of the most over babyfaces on the Raw roster despite not being in the midst of an actual feud. Will Jey feud primarily with Drew McIntyre after the Day 1 show? Is he a future challenger for Gunther?
Chelsea Green and Piper Niven vs. Kayden Carter and Katana Chance for the WWE Women’s Tag Team Titles: More of an in the middle than a Hit or a Miss. Both teams received flat crowd reactions during their entrances, but they eventually won over the crowd to some degree by the end of the match. Even so, the titles just don’t feel important. They just seem to bounce from one team that isn’t very over to another team that isn’t very over. At some point, they really need to settle in on the right team and go with a lengthy title reign to make the titles matter.
WWE Raw Misses
R-Truth vs. JD McDonagh: The match was fine in the moment, but I really don’t understand the idea of calling it a Loser Leaves Judgment Day match only to claim it wasn’t a real stipulation. Why bother?
Kofi Claus: WWE’s cornball holiday silliness is always a personal turnoff. On the bright side, the creative forces really kept it to a minimum and gave us much better shows than we typically get at this time of the year.
They had a strong tag team with Sasha and Naomi, but wanted to feed them to singles competitors.
Men’s tag champs were usually written the same way.
Will that change under Triple H?
The last two times I’ve seen the Brutus Ball, he’s landed in an awkward way on the opponent. They have to figure out how to angle him, so he can make the contact and let Julius ease the opponent into the other direction.