ARCHY’S ANALYSIS
WWE Monday Night Raw Review 7/18/11
By Adrian Arciuli for Wrestlezone.com
Rating- 7/10
Coming off one of the hottest pay per views in the past decade, Monday Night Raw had some high expectations to live up to and boy did it ever.
The show was highlighted by some great wrestling, the most we’ve seen on Raw in a long time and an intriguing finish which saw Triple H return and fire Vince McMahon as part of the TV storyline.
I loved how this angle played out as it enhanced the current storylines involving McMahon, the WWE title and CM Punk.
For the first time in years unpredictability has returned to a major WWE storyline. When was the last time Monday Night Raw through curveballs at us and kept the audience guessing when it came to storylines?
One problem I had with tonight’s episode was lots of people would have either hated or loved the show. Majority of fans wanted CM Punk there but he wasn’t and most of us keeping up with Twitter and Facebook knew he was at the Cubs game. I think he has re-signed with the company and is coming back in the not too distant future. People need to understand that Punk needs to go away for a few weeks to play up the storyline. This is a long term angle and if Punk came back straight away it would have cheapened and taken away the realness to his character.
Another small problem I had with the show was the WWE Championship tournament. Punk holds the WWE Title and by creating a new one it devalued what he had done the night before. I could see from the start the tournament it wasn’t going to end. Will they keep the original title and make Punk defend it due to having the 30-day defence clause or will a new title be created? Once again we will have to see how it unfolds in the upcoming weeks.
The tournament matches were a mixed bag. The standout was the final match between Rey Mysterio and R-Truth. They put on great match which kept the crowd on the edge of their seat throughout. Let’s completely forget those first round matches even happened because some of them were godly awful. Alex Riley vs. Miz was extremely sloppy and WWE needs to define why A-Ry is a baby face so the crowd can get behind him. Swagger looked bad also and I was disappointed Ziggler didn’t go over. It really felt like an old school edition with wrestling the focal point of the show.
In conclusion, you could ask 100 different people their thoughts on tonight’s show and you’re bound to get 99 different responses.
RAW MATCH RESULTS AND RATINGS
Miz vs. Alex Riley, WINNER: Miz
Rating: 0.5/5
Length: 5 minutes
R-Truth vs. Jack Swagger, WINNER: Truth
Rating: 1/5
Length: 5 minutes
Alberto Del Rio vs. Kofi Kingston, WINNER: Kingston
Rating: 1.5/5
Length: 5 minutes
Dolph Ziggler vs. Rey Mysterio, WINNER: Mysterio
Rating: 1.5/5
Length: 5 minutes
Divas Match, WINNER: Kelly Kelly’s team
Rating N/A
Length: 1 minute
Miz vs. Kofi Kingston, WINNER: Miz
Rating: 1.5/5
Length: 5 minutes
Rey Mysterio vs. R-Truth, WINNER: Mysterio
Rating: 2.5/5
Length: 12 minutes
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