Powell’s WWE Raw Hit List: Rhea Ripley vs. Raquel Rodriguez in an anything goes match, CM Punk and Seth Rollins, Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods, The Wyatt Sicks vs. The Final Testament and The Miz

By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)

WWE Raw Hits

Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods: The highlight of the night. The cold shoulder reactions Kingston and Woods received during various backstage exchanges with their peers were perfect. It carried over to the ring with the live crowd serenading the duo with “New Day sucks” chants and then giving them the Dominik Mysterio treatment whenever they tried to speak. The heel run is off to an excellent start. Here’s hoping it leads to the Raw tag team division becoming more of a creative priority.

CM Punk and Seth Rollins: The Punk sit-down interview was interesting in that he continued to be dismissive of Rollins. Punk’s version of the story about training a 16 year-old Rollins for free was good. I was hoping for a stronger rebuttal from Rollins, who basically complained about Punk ghosting him when he left the company. I can see being upset, but ghosting and Punk badmouthing the company make Rollins’ hatred of Punk feel a bit much. Nevertheless, the back and forth between the two is compelling, and the slow build to their eventual match has been well done thus far.

Rhea Ripley vs. Raquel Rodriguez in an anything goes match: A solid show closing brawl with interference from Liv Morgan and Iyo Sky headed into their title match on Saturday Night’s Main Event. It’s a little surprising to see Ripley beating Rodriguez already. After all, there aren’t many women who come off as credible threats to Ripley. It’s not that they can’t have more matches, but they failed to build this up as a big showdown feud. Although the show closed with Ripley and Sky both holding the Women’s World Championship belt, my guess is that Ripley at least tries to help Sky during or after the Women’s World Championship match to get Ripley on the NBC show.

Karrion Kross, Akam, Rezar, and The Miz vs. Uncle Howdy, Erick Rowan, Dexter Lumis, and Joe Gacy in an eight-man tag: A chaotic match, which seems to be exactly what they are going for with the Wyatt Sicks. The heels going over in the first match of the feud was the right call to give them a credibility boost while extending the feud. Will Paul Ellering get a chance to speak now that he’s back or will he just fade into the background again?

Women’s World Champion Liv Morgan vs. Dakota Kai in a non-title match: This was a well booked match. Kai advanced in the Intercontinental Title tournament last week, so having her lose clean would have been a mistake. While I’m normally not a fan of having so much outside interference, it made sense in this case because it gave the champion a win while protecting the challenger.

Lyra Valkyria vs. Zelina Vega vs. Ivy Nile in a Women’s Intercontinental Title tournament match: A soft Hit for a solid match with the predictable outcome of Valkyria going over.

WWE Raw Misses

Damian Priest added to the World Heavyweight Championship match on Saturday Night’s Main Event: Don’t get me wrong, adding Priest to the match is fine. Balor is a soft challenger in that no one views him as a threat to win the championship regardless of what the creative plan may be. The problem is that we never even heard from Priest or Gunther about Priest getting another shot at the title. There’s still time on Smackdown, but they made no attempt on Raw to sell viewers on the possibility of Priest leaving with the title, nor did they take the time to show how Gunther feels about the match becoming a Triple Threat.

Transfer Window: I guess Cody Rhodes leaving Adam Pearce’s office was a tease related to this, but we came away from Raw with just as many questions about how this will work as we had when it was first announced on Smackdown. Hopefully they are just getting through SNME and we’ll get all the details next week.