By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
WWE Raw Hits
Roman Reigns and Seth Rollins: Why wasn’t Seth booked to win the King of the Ring if they were going with him challenging Reigns for the World Heavyweight Championship at SummerSlam? Putting that aside for now, Rollins delivered a good promo to establish that he has had Roman’s number over the years. This match won’t move tickets like Reigns vs. Oba Femi would have, but hopefully the build will be strong enough that it feels a lot bigger than it does in the moment.
Paul Heyman: First off, he looked healthier after dropping some weight, so good for him. From a character standpoint, his cold reaction to Austin Theory saying he didn’t know Heyman was at the show after he ignored his calls was an interesting change. Is Heyman leaving the Vision? Is Theory being kicked out of the vision? Is the Vision faction breaking up? Is Heyman showing tough love for Theory? Regardless, I like that Heyman didn’t reveal everything in one night.
Rey Mysterio vs. Ethan Page: A soft Hit for Rey winning the latest of the matches involving some combination of him and Dragon Lee facing Page and Rusev. There’s no shame in losing to the legendary Rey character. My concern is that Page didn’t get a televised entrance, let alone promo time, before losing clean. It’s one show, so I’m not going to read too much into it, but hopefully the creative team can give Page something meaningful to do.
Jimmy Uso vs. LA Knight: In the middle, rather than a Hit or a Miss. The show had interesting opening and closing segments, but the matches in between felt trivial. In most cases, the matches just filled time and didn’t really advance any of the associated storylines. This isn’t all that surprising with the crew having just returned from Saudi Arabia, and also having to contend with Friday’s Smackdown being taped after Raw.
WWE Raw Misses
Oba Femi chooses to face Brock Lesnar rather than challenge for a world championship: Oba and Lesnar did a fine job during the angle that set up their Hell in a Cell match. The problem is the bizarre path the company took to get to the match. What was the point of having Oba win King of the Ring and tease fans with the possibility of him facing Roman Reigns at SummerSlam? That’s the biggest match that WWE has to offer, and I don’t mind them saving it for WrestleMania, but giving fans hope it would happen at SummerSlam made the actual SummerSlam matches feel like letdowns in comparison. If the creative forces really felt that Oba needed to win the King of the Ring for some reason, they could have had Lesnar attack Oba and start to interfere in his matches. It would have been understandable then if Oba opted to face Lesnar, along with the explanation that he needed to take out Brock to get a fair shot when he has his world championship match. As it stands, it looks like Oba’s feud with Brock is more important to him than winning a world championship. And who knew that the King and Queen of the Ring winners had the option of saving their title shots until sometime after SummerSlam? Sadly, that’s par for the course since it took the company weeks to establish that the tournament winners have the choice of challenging for either world championship after previously being limited to facing the world champion of their brand. This is the type of “make up the rules as you go” booking that I hoped would end once Paul Levesque took over as head of creative.
Chad Gable vs. JD McDonagh: A minor Miss. It was the best match of the night, so it’s Hit-worthy for those who care most about match quality. But the goal should have been to make Gable look strong, not to eat up over eleven minutes with a competitive match. Even before the match, the live crowd’s reaction to Gable was noticeably down compared to the big ovations he’d been getting since he lost the mask vs. mask match in Mexico. The problems actually start with his entrance. Gable comes out to what sounds like an ’80s rock theme that should have been given to Lizzy Hale in NXT, and then he couldn’t come off any less cool when he stands in the ring and tries to get the crowd to clap with him. Gable connected with fans because he was humbled by his time in Mexico, and his character seemed sincere in his apologies. The entrance makes him look like a dad trying way too hard to be cool.
Joe Hendry and The Street Profits: Speaking of cool, I don’t think Montez Ford and Angelo Dawkins have ever looked less cool than they did while singing and swaying to Hendry’s song about their tag team title win. I like Hendry, and I like the Profits, but I don’t need to see them together in this setting ever again.
Raquel Rodriguez vs. Maxxine Dupri for a shot at the Women’s Intercontinental Championship: The crowd’s reaction was telling. And it’s hard to blame the wrestlers. Rodriguez is a heel, and Dupri has been unlikable since she started moving toward her own heel turn. So who were the fans supposed to cheer for?
(Jason Powell, founder and editor of ProWrestling.net, has covered pro wrestling full-time dating back to 1997. He hosts a weekly podcast, Pro Wrestling Boom, and also appears regularly on the Wade Keller Pro Wrestling Podcast. Reach him via email at dotnetjason@gmail.com and on social media via @prowrestlingnet.bsky.social or x.com/prowrestlingnet. For his full bio and information on this website, click here.)
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