Not a promising set of posts for the leadup to summerslam.

Raw was the best it has been in forever.

Smackdown was decent.

KO v Drew was a good match, shame Drew took a loss but that's the only real negative.
Women's tag match was good, Bayley at the end was also very nice to see.
I'm excited for Trish v Charlotte.
I'm excited for Bray at summerslam, Finn is taking a break so him losing a lot isn't that important.
Nakamura v Ali was good.
Kofi v Styles was good.

The stuff with Roman at the end could have been a good segment but was just weird with how he reacted to it all.

I know Finn had some scheduled time off but according to Meltzer's podcast yesterday, he's been in the hospital for a few days with a sickness.

Trish came out to absolutely no pop at all, seemed strange.

Liked Joe starting off the show as he did, bit different to the same old.

Natalya zzz

The taima stream showed Benoit vs. The Giant from 8/96 during this commercial. This was the match I was looking for in LKJ's thread but never found a few months ago . Saw a dropkick from TG and I'm sure it's the best thing that will happen during this 3 hour RAW. This as well:



edit: much easier to find now that I know the date. gif by LKJ

Forget who's podcast it was, but someone in the business had mentioned that they asked a WWE contact if Heyman was really writing Raw and they said no, it's still pretty much all Vince.

Really good promo by Becky tonight. I''be been tough on her but that was terrific.

The response by Natalya........woof

Dave and Bryan have said that since the news of Bischoff/Heyman were coming in. Last Tuesday Vince showed up at SD! at 4pm to completely rewrite the show because he didn't think it built up SummerSlam enough.

I'm a fan of having Alexa/Nikki vs. Kairi/Asuka for the titles now .

Seth is terrible.

Having that Becky/Charlotte v Trish/Natalya match was super strange and terrible.

That match should have never been booked and also they didn't even pair the faces and heels up. I guess Natalya and Trish go together because.....Canada

Yeah, I didn't get that and people who didn't watch SD last probably wondered what the hell Trish was even doing there.

And Seth should have given that promo from a hospital bed. It seems kinda ridiculous that he, what, crawled into the arena and out to the ring before anyone could stop him in that condition?

Has to be Rikishi driving the car that hit Reigns, right?

Unless it was one of those hybrid or electric cars. Then it's DB.

It was a forklift so chances are it was Bryan as those are electric.

When Joe was playing mad and saying "there were millions of cameras backstage, and not one of them caught me". Why doesn't anyone address the elephant in the room of the cameras not picking up who the driver was

Oh God! I just finished Raw. How the hell did Concussberg even get involved in any of this? I guess we can crap on it all we want, but the crowd did pop pretty big. I just don't understand how this is even happening after his last debacle a few months ago.

Becky's been bringing the fire back this whole feud (check out her promos on Twitter if you haven't seen them) and I'm loving it. It's fair to question the wisdom of a Lynch/Natalya program but Becky has gone above and beyond to try to make it feel big and I'm excited for the match.

I liked the touch of Joe being concerned for Reigns after the vehicular homicide attempt -- he wants to beat Reigns up as a wrestler but doesn't want the guy to die or anything. It put over that what happened was something heinous and beyond typical wrestling stuff. I also welcome back trashy "who was driving the car????" shenanigans back to WWE programming with open arms.

I wonder if Ziggler is actually a good heel or something, because I'm sort of excited to watch Goldberg massacre him in 20 seconds. I assume this is happening because of the SA debacle -- Goldberg wants to go out with a better performance and Ziggler can make him look great.

Andrade/Rey was a pretty top tier TV match imo.

Ziggler has mentioned Goldberg in a promo three weeks in a row prior to tonight.

I'd guess just a Goldberg killing people is fun thing there. I'm always up for a 1-3 minute squash featuring Goldberg. Tonight was pretty funny though. Showing up in whatever the hell he was wearing along with the white beard just didn't bring the aura of Goldberg. It felt very lazy.

I might be in the minority, but Goldberg coming back is just another thing that is wrong with WWE right now.

I know pro wrestling has always liked nostalgia, but having guys that were popular legit 20 years ago come back to absolutely destroy your current roster is so short sighted.

"It's our annual match to remind the WWE Universe that everyone now sucks, and the only reason Brock is champ is because Goldberg chooses not to take the belt from him in 30 seconds, stay tuned folks!"

I generally agree. This is a rare instance where I don't mind it, since the ship has already sailed on Ziggler having any real credibility and it'll probably be a fun squash that doesn't take up much time on the card.

What were they going for there with that Rollins segment? He just looked like an incredible idiot going down to the ring in no shape to fight and just welcoming a gigantic ass kicking.

Then that whiny sympathetic promo which got no reaction from the crowd and even inspired some 'What' chants.

Rollins needs to lose to Brock and disappear for a bit.

Ehhhh, this is a bit of an overstatement. The last time Goldberg beat an active roster member was 30 months ago. Lesnar beat him clean at Mania 33, which was Goldberg's first career clean loss. His next match was another clean loss. I'm sure he's going over Ziggler, but I don't think in kayfabe Goldberg is somehow an "uncrowned champ" or whatever. Him squashing Owens is the only thing in his comeback run that sucked booking-wise. His win over Lesnar was treated as Lesnar getting quickly surprised after underestimating him.

I agree with the sentiment but it's better have him come out and kick ass for a minute or two than have Take come out and have his entrance take longer than Goldberg's entrance plus match.

Except that it happened twice (before Lesnar did finally beat him).

Are you counting eliminating him from the Rumble? If so, ehhhhhhhhh. If you're counting Mania XX, that doesn't apply to the argument and results 15 years earlier aren't really impacting kayfabe "rankings."

Goldberg is still a draw, can still put on the exact same style matches he used to (given the right opponent) and can still be used to give someone a bit of a push after building him up a bit.

The reason he is meant to be back is because he was outraged with himself after his match with taker and how bad it was. Taker has since put on a reasonable match and I hope Goldberg can have a nice couple of month run.

The issue isn't old guys coming back either it's just that the product is a mess. WWE have a ridiculous roster of talent but they don't ever do anything with 95% of them and the other 5% get weird stop/start pushes. There is also a distinct lack of characters and people feel unnatural in characters they do have such as Rollins currently.

If Lesnar beats Rollins, no one is surprised, and Seth is ruined as the face of the company. If injured Seth beats Lesnar, it's absurd and no one would buy it.

The only way they can book themselves out of this is the Ultimate Warrior solution. Doctors refuse to allow Seth to compete. Lesnar needs an opponent. Out comes Braun Strowman for the win and the huge pop and they give him until Wrestlemania to see if he can be the top guy.