By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
WWE Raw Hits
Roman Reigns and Bronson Reed: Reigns delivered a quality promo before he was interrupted by Reed and Paul Heyman. The verbal exchange that followed was compelling, with Reed talking about his Samoan tribe being more dangerous than Roman’s tribe. This led to a pull-apart brawl that provided a strong final push for Reigns vs. Reed at Clash in Paris. Reed did a lot of creative wheel spinning after he was called up to the main roster, so it’s great to see him doing so well now that he’s prominently featured. Sunday’s match with Reigns feels like the biggest of Reed’s WWE career.
Bron Breakker vs. LA Knight I was pleasantly surprised to see the match end with a pin, even though Breakker’s win was not clean. WWE has gone overboard with DQ finishes in television main events, and it would have been easy to justify in this case with Knight in the four-way championship match at Clash in Paris, and because Breakker needs to be protected. But the creative forces put the work in and came up with a finish that resulted in Knight losing without being damaged. The post-match angle was strong with Jey Uso taking out Knight and CM Punk with superkicks, which helped cement the “every man for himself” mentality for Clash in Paris. On a side note, Knight has always been a good promo, but he’s leveled up the intensity going into the four-way match.
Dragon Lee vs. JD McDonagh: The best match of the night opened the show. The Liger Bomb spot was frightening, but McDonagh seemed fine even though he appeared to land at least partially on his head. It was a nice win for Lee, and Corey Graves really put him over strong on commentary. Is this the start of a real push on Raw, or is it more about positioning him as a star on the AAA brand?
Rhea Ripley vs. Roxanne Perez: It doesn’t always work when a babyface is significantly bigger than a heel, but these two pulled it off nicely. It helped to have Raquel Rodriguez interfering, but Perez chopping Ripley down by targeting her leg was very effective. Ripley’s storyline involvement with Iyo Sky and the bitter Kabuki Warriors has quickly become one of the more interesting stories on Raw.
Becky Lynch and Nikki Bella: Another solid verbal exchange between the two heading into their Women’s Intercontinental Championship match. Lynch has produced some of her most entertaining mic work during her latest heel run, and Nikki has come off well with a few good zingers at Lynch’s expense.
Finn Balor vs. AJ Styles: A soft Hit for a fairly basic television match that didn’t get the time needed to even try to live up to some of their previous matches.
Penta vs. Kofi Kingston: A soft Hit for Kingston using his numbers advantage created by Xavier Woods and Grayson Waller. I’m hopeful that this will eventually lead to Penta bringing in reinforcements, which ideally would be his brother Rey Fenix coming over from the Smackdown side. It was fine to attempt to establish both men as singles wrestlers. But Fenix is off to a slow start, and it feels like there’s a limit to how far the company will push Penta, so why book a Lucha Bros reunion?
WWE Raw Misses
None: It’s not that this was an outstanding episode. While some of the matches and segments were better than others, nothing really struck me as being Miss worthy. It likely helped to have a smaller crew to work with while overseas, because there wasn’t as much pressure to cram more undercard talent on the show.
McDonagh’s giant head could survive being hit by a 747.
Credit goes to Rhea for putting emphasis on getting the smaller heel opponents over.
The fact that Rhea is still the badass who can go toe-to-toe with Nia Jax, while giving realistic-looking offense to Roxanne and Liv — that’s talent.
I can’t believe how terrible, truly, truly terrible, those three Japanese women are at acting. Iyo is the least convincing actor/actress on the roster.