An interesting story was told around the WWE championship on Raw.
MVP was in the room with Bobby Lashley and his ladies, and when Kevin Patrick asked him why the singles match was made a tag match, he said that Kofi Kingston couldn’t get away with the disrespect from last week.
Lashley was upset with Kingston’s comments on his vacation from last week, and you could feel his anger throughout the show.
Later, New Day had a standard New Day promo and were just hyping the match.
Before the match, Lashley was doing pull ups on a bar as MVP just plainly stated that Lashley hasn’t missed a step. He had a death stare into the camera as New Day’s music played. I really appreciated all of the seriousness from Lashley because I think it’s really hitting home the story being told.
In the closing stretch, Lashley was not showing any concern for MVP in the ring even though he was still limping. Kingston tagged in and flew all over the place, taking out MVP and knocking Lashley off the apron. A surprise Trouble in Paradise knocked Lashley out of the ring and then Kingston countered the Playmaker with a Trouble in Paradise as Xavier Woods took Lashley out so he couldn’t interfere.
The story here is that it appears Bobby may start to realize MVP is hanging around and throwing him off his game. MVP got pinned and Bobby was mad, even though he helped him up. You could see it.
The insertion into his match and the distracting ladies might be leading to a Lashley turn on MVP at Money in the Bank. I have a theory that MVP will be up to his usual shenanigans and Lashley won’t be able to capitalize off of it now that there will be someone else in his opponent’s corner for the first time this year.
I think Bobby will want to be solo heading into SummerSlam and take all of his distractions out to focus on whoever his Big opponent should bE.
Let’s get to the rest of the show. For a full rundown of Raw, check out the live blog by Claire Elizabeth!
Opening segments set the mood
The show started with the Money in the Bank edition of Miz TV.
Let’s all make sure that John Morrison is as moist as possible for Money in the Bank. This was something said on Raw. Drew McIntyre was called a “splash-hole” on this Raw.
The moist stuff ran its course a while ago, y’all.
We learned that McIntyre is a distant relative to Davey Crockett. The more you know. We also learned that he will be able to cash in on any champion on any brand. Please don’t give McIntyre the win, WWE.
Ricochet came out and spelled his name and then was called dry by Morrison.
Riddle climbed the only ladder set up in the ring (they don’t call it the Money in the Bank edition for nothing!) and said he was very high and sad.
AJ Styles and Omos came out to continue whining about how last week should have been a one on one match and attacked Riddle, leading Morrison to attack Ricochet before their match, which we’ll talk about in a bit.
This is not the type of opening segment that makes me excited to tune into a 3 hour show.
Opening segments that set up matches for the night... that’s fine. All of this pointless talking and people not acting like regular human beings gets boring. I can tell you that it actively made me less interested in the show, and I don’t feel like Raw kept the good streak going.
And that was before the absolutely pointless Elias/Cedric Alexander and Jaxson Ryker/R-Truth match. Even before the questionable 8 woman tag booking, and the next segment I’m talking about.
Can we stop this, please?
Charlotte Flair announced that she might miss Money in the Bank.
She said Rhea Ripley is scared because she has to resort to doing Flair’s own moves to take her out. She’ll be taken out indefinitely and Ripley will continue to keep her championship. She praised Ripley for using her own tactics.
Ripley then came out, also with a crutch on the same leg as Flair.
She said she’s still using Flair’s tactics and that Flair is being a drama queen. They both dropped the act and swung the crutches at each other. Flair avoided Ripley and got out of the ring.
This segment was completely pointless and not how you book champions. I really don’t understand why they couldn’t just let Rhea be the great bad ass she was coming out of the Royal Rumble. All of this heel/face/tweener stuff has just been bad.
I was really enjoying Charlotte after returning, but none of this works. The Opportunity Charlotte the first month was great, but man all of the stuff since has not been.
Will this feud be over after Money in the Bank? Probably not, going off of WWE’s track record.
The Rest
Riddle defeated AJ Styles
Riddle did a great job selling the foot injury in this match. He never was able to do his usual entrance, Styles heavily worked it over throughout and got tricked by Riddle when he did the Karate Kid pose. Styles kept kicking him in the right foot to knock him down , and even when Riddle used the injured foot, he sold it. Omos knocked him off his feet without the referee seeing. All of a sudden Erik and Ivar distracted Omos, which distracted Styles, and Riddle rolled him up to win. While the distraction finishes are meh, this was a great match and I would be interested in Riddle winning the briefcase just to see the interactions with Randy Orton.
John Morrison defeated Ricochet
I was excited to see another match in this series. A very cool move that Ricochet didn’t get to follow through with happened with a backslide over Miz which he was trying to turn into a hurricanrana on Morrison, but Morrison caught him and threw him into the barricade. They tried to do something crazy over the top rope that looked frightening but then the silly referee who was looking right at Ricochet and Miz didn’t happen to notice that Miz was blocking him from getting back into the ring, and Ricochet got counted out.
Mustafa Ali defeated Mansoor
A few weeks ago I had to advertise this feud for WWE, but now they’re giving it life. My work here is done. This was really more than a match. It was Ali teaching Mansoor all about how to be successful. Mansoor had a nice spinebuster for a two count. But Mansoor let his kindness in and helped Ali get out of the ropes, and Ali rolled him up to win. I’m enjoying this back and forth and wonder if it leads to Mansoor joining the former RETRIBUTION leader.
Hello disqualification my old friend (Drew McIntyre vs. Jinder Mahal)
So Mahal was upset that McIntyre texted him the number 2 instead of saying the word too. Kind of childish and ridiculous, but whatevs. Corey Graves literally put me in tears after Drew’s promo about the Loch Ness Monster when he said that the next tale Drew graces us with will be how he defeated Lord Farquaad. Mahal was pretty aggressive in this match so that was nice to see. Drew is Drew and is still cutting the worst promos on Raw. And that’s saying something when you have a monstrosity of an opening segment like this show’s. Yeah, it’s looking more like Drew is winning the briefcase. Yikes.
Nia Jax, Shayna Baszler, Eva Marie, and DouDrop defeated Naomi, Asuka, Nikki A.S.H., and Alexa Bliss
DouDrop was going to start with Naomi, but Marie tagged in and couldn’t handle it so she tagged DouDrop back in. The funniest part of this hands down was Bliss scaring Marie out of the ring. Jax and DouDrop may end up being a decent tag team at some point in the future. The stuff with Reginald and the gaze of Bliss is really dumb now. It been weeks. Stop looking in her goddamn eyes, dude. The almost superhero got pinned so let’s see how well this gimmick is treated going forward.
Lucha House Party defeated Mace and T-Bar
T-Bar launched Lince Dorado out of the ring, and then Mace went to Byron Saxton and gave him some commentary tips. Continuity! Ya know what these teams aren’t so bad with each other. Nice shock win for Lucha House Party here.
Grade: C
What were your thoughts, Cagesiders?