WWE Monday Night Raw recap: Dear Monday Night Raw

The season premiere of WWE Monday Night Raw seemed to stay the course ahead of Hell in a Cell, with the exception of a bizarre twist.

Dear Monday Night Raw,

I suppose it’s my fault, isn’t it? Expecting that a new set, the return of pyro, a change in the commentary team, a new theme — heck, the whole concept of a show that never takes time off having a “season premiere” as your bosses are wont to do with you every few years — would mean that anything has really changed was a fool’s errand on my behalf. I really should have known better. After all, this week you brought us Jerry Lawler, Ric Flair and Hulk Hogan on the same night and demanded they be celebrated; the latter two are now centerpieces of the next Saudi Arabia show. A fresh coat of paint on the latrine doesn’t change what it is, fundamentally.

Now, it’s not all bad, of course. Even a bad pro wrestling show is good, in a sense, if you love pro wrestling as a monolith, and in three hours there’s bound to be stuff that is objectively acceptable, if not brilliant. After all, these are some of the best professional wrestlers in the world, plying their trade at the very highest level. But Monday’s edition of Raw did little to advance that message. What good took place was entirely obliterated by where the show ended up when it was heading off the air.

So, Raw, I don’t know who you are anymore, or whether this is really who you’ve always been, lying dormant for 20 years before reminding us again. Wrestling is, and should be, for everyone — I strongly believe this — but it’s also hard to tell who this particular episode was for. If this is the way you’re going to be going forward, living with you is going to become difficult.

All the best,

Andrea

So, what did happen on Monday Night Raw this week?

Brock Lesnar showing up to destroy Rey Mysterio (for unintentionally provoking The Beast, by taking back the microphone, a high offense in the Court of Lesnar) and then his son, Dominic(k), provided massive momentum at Raw‘s open and seems to point to an interesting rivalry post-Lesnar’s Friday Night SmackDown challenge to Kofi Kingston’s WWE Championship.

Tag team wrestling also had a good night, which is always welcomed when it happens, given how much this company doesn’t like to bother with it. Heavy Machinery looked strong, albeit in a loss, to the Raw Tag Team Champions, Robert Roode and Dolph Ziggler. The match featured all the typical babyface hope spots and hot tags and the finish was energetic — Otis hit a double Caterpillar on both Roode and Ziggler and he and Tucker seemed about to finish them off via Compactor. But Ziggler snagged Tucker with the Zig Zag, superkicked Otis and then one Glorious DDT from Roode (on Tucker) put the challengers away.

The Viking Raiders and The O.C. also continued their feud in perhaps their most competitive match thus far, and while the Vikings picked up the win at least Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows didn’t look incompetent in defeat.

Bray Wyatt’s Firefly Fun House had a new episode, which is typically a good time but this week felt a little flat, as it was simply done in service of hyping up The Fiend’s match against Universal Champion Seth Rollins at (and in) Hell in a Cell.

It was more a hype segment than an episode of a children’s show, which has been the track the “show” has been on since The Fiend got back to wrestling. Let’s let this again be a doorway into Wyatt’s twisted brain rather than an advertisement for an upcoming match; that was where the gold was mined, where it differed from literally any and everything we’ve seen before.

Cesaro and Ricochet faced off again — never not a good thing — but this time only got around three minutes in the ring together — never a good thing. AJ Styles versus Cedric Alexander for Styles’ United States Championship faired better, time-wise, making it the match of the night. It also didn’t feature any O.C. interference, just a series of counters that eventually led to the one, final, true counter into a Styles Clash and Styles retaining his title.

Those things encapsulated your only highlights this week. And the lows got considerably lower as the night went on, it’s nadir the “main event,” if one could call it that, especially because it’s worlds away from what we expected at the start of the show (Rollins vs. Mysterio) or what we expected from about halfway through the show (Rollins vs. Rusev). More on … all of that … later.

The women’s division remained an afterthought, despite it’s — and the company’s, one could easily argue — biggest star (or stars, really, as Sasha Banks has definitely been revitalized after the heel turn) featuring in a Hell in a Cell match of their own this Sunday.

Banks took on Alexa Bliss, with Lynch sitting in on commentary. Most of that featured the two women taunting each other from afar. After a quick Banks win, Lynch hit the ring and after getting in a few blows, Banks retreated, running off through the crowd.

See, Banks won’t be able to escape Lynch inside the Cell Structure, so she must run when she can now to help forward the narrative. Never mind that these two women have had ever-escalating violent clashes since Banks’ return, and never mind that the Cell itself is its own story; complicating things is something WWE does and does … well? Is that doing well?

The other match featured the next chapter in the Lacey Evans-Natalya feud that no one watching has any investment in. Evans quickly rolled up Natalya following raking Nattie’s eyes; post-win, she hit Natalya with the Women’s Right. WWE needs to do more and better with its women’s division. And while its a common refrain around these parts, it’s a serious request. With NXT a two-hour show on Wednesday nights and airing alongside AEW Dynamite (and also, notably, IMPACT heading to AXS) WWE’s red and blue brands are going to be way behind the curve when it comes to women’s wrestling.

Then, there was the aforementioned returns of Ric Flair and Hulk Hogan, this time as guests on MizTV. Things started about as chaotic and incoherently as possible before it became clear that Flair ripping on Hogan was not some kind of unscripted shoot (as it first seemed) but actually there to set something up. Eventually, all of Twitter seemed to catch on at the same time and recoil: Would they really be running Hogan versus Flair in Saudi Arabia on Halloween? Flair is 70 years old, Hogan is 66, etc., etc.

But no, Flair versus Hogan is happening in another manner: As the two men coaching teams of five at said Saudi show. Hogan announced his captain, Seth Rollins; Flair’s is Randy Orton. Orton and Rollins try to have a match, but Orton’s apparent teammate, King Baron Corbin, arrived to treat Rollins to a two-on-one beating. He is saved by Rusev, who will be Rollins’ teammate.

And this whole fever dream sets up the waking nightmare to come.

Rusev, taking a cue from Braun Strowman, used his save of Rollins to challenge for Rollins’ Universal Championship that night, serving as the replacement for Rey Mysterio, who accompanied Dominic(k) to the Local Medical Facility. Rollins obliged. Meanwhile, ahead of their match, a white limo arrived to the arena.

Also, throughout the night, the subject of Lana, Rusev’s actual, real-life wife and also WWE Superstar keeps coming up. There are references to “trouble at home,” (even Maria Kanellis finally refutes her claim of Rusev being the father of her child because of said troubles). So it’s clear something is about to come of all that, as well.

And oh, does it; the Rollins-Rusev match is interrupted by Bobby Lashley, who has a new girlfriend and, yes, it’s Lana. Then, the two of them graphically make out on the stage for literal minutes but it felt like forever, in the worst way possible.

Now, cuckold angles are nothing new to WWE as of late (there is that aforementioned Kanellis angle, for example, as well as Drake Maverick being unable to consummate his marriage because he does not posses the 24/7 Championship). But they’re also not good, not entertaining and serve no purpose — it seemed like we had moved well, well beyond WWE programming doing things like this, and yet, it appears we were wrong.

It’s almost impossible to articulate how terrible this closing segment was, and no appearance by The Fiend afterward to menace Rollins ahead of their Hell in a Cell match could salvage it. Everything watchable or passable that happened in the previous three-ish hours was essentially wiped out by this pointless, gratuitous story.

Again: Who was this for? Why does Vince McMahon and Paul Heyman think cuckold angles are what the viewers are clamoring for? And keep in mind, this was also the go-home show for Hell in a Cell, with no additional matches made, or at least announced.

It’s like the pay-per-view doesn’t matter because WWE decided months and months after it was scheduled to then completely upend everything — Raw, SmackDown on FOX, NXT on USA Network, a draft scheduled for nearly two weeks from now — so instead we get the same feuds treading water and the newest one kicked off by something that was, frankly, gross.

So, let us know your thoughts, since you already know mine.