Review: WWE Monday Night Raw (5-6-2024)
Raw is LIVE from Hartford, CT!
Tonight! It’s King and Queen of the Ring first round matches! Drew McIntyre isn’t medically cleared so he’ll not be facing Finn Balor as planned.
Damien Priest, Balor, McDonagh, and injured Dominik Mysterio are here to kick us off. Priest must address his issues with Judgment Day from Backlash, specifically “what went down” after the match. Priest is taking responsibility for losing his cool. Priest hugs the Irish and Mysterio has to join the hug from behind because he’s not really involved in this discussion. Now Balor will talk about how he’s going to win King of the Ring. He believes he gets a first round bye, and apparently so! He does some Seth Rollins laughs. No, never mind, Adam Pearce has news: Balor will have to face Jey Uso. RIGHT NOW!
King of the Ring: Jey Uso vs Finn Balor
We get to see Jey’s whole entrance before the commercial break. Masterful padding. But they do at least wait until they return to start the match. Jey Uso is pretty much full-on shtick at this stage, he might as well be working middle school gym stallfests with Jerry Lawler. Or he could join “Bullet Club War Dogs.” He’s basically post-Outlaws Road Dogg at this point.
I’m not saying this is terrible, it’s plenty watchable. Eventually, Drew McIntyre is ringside, receiving some “CM Punk” chants. Jey spears Balor to win and advance, which makes his old rival Drew very mad, but Jey sees that freight train coming and gets out of the way. Fine enough, felt a little actually flat, Jey looked a little slow at times as a legitimate observation, might have taken a couple knocks on Saturday plus the travel and all that. **½
Backstage, Ivy Nile and Zoey Stark warm up.
Backstage, Becky Lynch arrives.
Backstage after break, McIntyre is walking and talking with Adam Pearce. Pearce blames McIntyre for bringing up his arm injury in the first place. He’s mad so he gets into his little short muscle car like back in the day when Rock Hudson would be put in cars he was too tall for. As he pulls away, CM Punk arrives in a Z28. He wants to head out to the ring.
CM Punk is here in the ring, he has something to say
Punk wanted to fight Drew but JUUUST missed him. Now he’s gonna talk directly to Pat McAfee because Punk knows it would be good to suck up to Pat McAfee, who for some reason makes a lot of arm motions while being spoken to, very strange behavior. Punk wants to stay out here until McIntyre comes back.
Now Punk wants to tell me a story. Me, specifically. Not the rest of you. He cried and had surgery, probably in that order. If Punk wants to main event WrestleMania next year he better make sure his next surgery comes in, like, December, so he can return around late March/early April. The crowd is not really reacting to much of what he says. Punk asks if McIntyre hates himself, and McAfee makes a movie ape noise, then Punk brings up his great CHOKING skills! He’s gonna break Drew’s face. Not sure the crowd was as into this as they hoped.
Backstage, Cathy Kelley is with Ricochet, who is the WWE Speed champion, which is not acknowledged on real WWE TV. He faces Ilja Dragunov later. Braun Strowman is here to talk to his buddy, and he calls Ricochet “kiddo.”
Queen of the Ring: Natalya vs IYO Sky
Submission specialist Natalya works the legs and goes for a sharpshooter quick, but doesn’t get it. IYO misses an Asai moonsault but lands on her feet and back rolls, so Natalya kicks her in the face. More a leg shove than a kick, really.
These guys cannot shut up about France before going to the break. After the break, IYO is throwing bad strikes at Natalya, who hits what Michael Cole insists is a Michinoku Driver. Her superplex is the real deal, though. Not real enough to win the match but then she has not mastered the maneuver, I suppose. You must master a maneuver to win with it. POWER BAWM. Sharpshooter once again a no-go, so much for being a specialist. IYO hits the double knees and moonsault for the win. Well, so much for the dedication. Good match, though. Ol’ Nat’s been good of late. ***¼
Post-match, Dakota Kai takes the mic to say she’ll be replacing the injured Asuka later against Lyra Valkyria. Boy, these tournaments are off to a rough start. Also they’ll be coming for the tag belts and Becky’s belt, and so on.
Here is an Ilja Dragunov video package, extremely necessary as nobody watches NXT. He drinks from the chalice of suffering. Me too, man. I get it. Me and you, big dog. It’s a great video package, like, “good DTV action movie” corny, which is exactly what wrestling should always aspire to be.
King of the Ring: Ricochet vs Ilja Dragunov
I mean, if you want to pick someone to make “Ilja Dragunov” clear to your audience immediately, yeah, it’s Ricochet. Oh shit! They have normalized WWE Speed! It’s canon!
They're in commercial break but the match has gone past the three-minute mark now so you must wonder if Ricochet's new Twitter wrestling conditioning will be a factor against him. Ricochet gets German' suplayed over onto his face on the floor. Ricochet comes back with a super huracanrana from the top, Dragunov retreats to the floor and Ricochet is diving on him on every side of the ring, or wants to anyway. Three of them get done! Hey it’s time for another ad break.
After break, Dragunov hits the Constantin Special and a big ass senton bomb for two. Rick makes another comeback. This is real good, as you would hope and likely expect it to be, with both guys getting convincing runs that you buy as a finish, but all put together in a way that doesn’t feel cliche. Dragunov wins to advance in the tournament. That GOOD stuff. Unfortunately, Dragunov has to wrestle Jey Uso in the next round. ****
Backstage, Sheamus is with the lady whose name I haven’t remembered yet. Jackie or something. Sheamus has undergone MEDICAL PROCEDURE after MEDICAL PROCEDURE after MEDICAL PROCEDURE. He plans to kick Gunther’s arse this time. I have my doubts. Well, he probably will, but still lose.
Queen of the Ring: Ivy Nile vs Zoey Stark
Calling every aggressive angry lil' wrestler a "pit bull" is really not helping the people trying to rehab the reputation of pit bulls. That’s also such a Vince thing, they should probably stop since this is nothing like THAT company anymore.
Oh, BROTHER, these two are dying out here. Maybe this is the one that should have been stuck on a “Live Event” this weekend so that nobody had to watch it on their television. Stark wins. Bad and lifeless. *
Backstage, R-Truth is a moron! It’s funny every time! R-Truth has Dan Hurley. And here’s The Miz. R-Truth wants to defend the titles against the UConn Huskies. Man, every line of it just gets funnier and funnier.
After they leave, Bron Breakker is here to talk to Adam Pearce. Bron wants to be in King of the Ring but he’s not. Pearce will host him in his office so that he doesn’t have to talk about it on TV. That’s fantastic. Thanks, fellas.
“Big” Bronson Reed vs Chad Gable
This is not a King of the Ring match. This is just some junk with Chad Gable presented by Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.
Backstage, Judgment Day are talking to each other. Finn Balor did not want to lose but he did. McDonagh will wrestle Braun Strowman at some point. Dominik arrives with Carlito Carribean Cool, whom Damian Priest still is not interested in, but he needs help with the LWO and he’s being real about it. Priest remains disinterested, displaying vastly greater intelligence than legendary moron Rey Mysterio by not wanting anything to do with 57-year-old Carlito Carribean Cool.
Anyway, back to the entrances for this match. They start it by hitting each other. That works for me. Gable Germans “Big” over. Gable then hits a, like, semi-T-Bone superplex on “Big.” But before this kicks too much ass Sami Zayn runs in to attack Gable and then “Big.” In a way, the numbers overwhelm Zayn, but the end result is “Big” standing wide once again.
Backstage, Pearce confronts Reed as if Reed did something other than go out there to wrestle and get attacked by an angry French-Canadian, then defend himself.
Here’s a Lyra Valkyria video package. This is not as good as the Dragunov one, this is more that, like, “I have dreamed of WWE my whole life :)” shit.
Backstage, Becky Lynch has her show outfit on now and is once again walking around.
Backstage, Gunther talks to the camera, and to me. Unlike Sheamus, Gunther doesn’t care if his matches are good which is why he works so hard to have good matches all the time.
Michael Cole has an in-ring sit-down with Becky Lynch
Becky reads off a list of women’s wrestlers on the Raw roster. Eventually, Liv Morgan, like me, has gotten sick of this terrible waste of time. Becky will face Liv at King and Queen of the Ring. Morgan has never beaten Lynch. Now she has purpose, though.
Uh oh! Here comes Damage CTRL minus Asuka. They plan to attack, so Morgan and Lynch go back-to-back, until Liv just rolls out of the ring and says it’s not her problem, which rules and is funny. Damage CTRL beat up Lynch until Irish Lyra Valkyria runs, eventually, for the save. And that’ll lead right into the next match!
Queen of the Ring: Lyra Valkyria vs Dakota Kai
Well, not RIGHT into, I guess, because we return from break with Jackie and Sami Zayn backstage. He’ll go to Saudi Arabia to face Reed and Gable.
OK, now the match! I guess they’ve just been standing around out there a while. Ah, yes, let’s get another trailer for Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes instead of an honest look at what Lyra Valkyria can do. She does a couple cool things and then there’s a commercial.
Dakota really going hard making Lyra look great, which isn’t that hard, Lyra is really good. Her and Dragunov getting drafted up was Good News. The crowd not really with this one, but it’s better than Stark vs Nile was. Lyra wins. She’ll get there with the crowd, or the crowd will get there with her, however you want to put it. Sadly she now has to wrestle Zoey Stark which is not going to help on that journey. ***
Backstage, Kofi Kingston sits in shadows, for some reason, to babble about Xavier Woods and Kofi’s own KOTR journey, which starts at a “Live Event” this weekend against Rey Mysterio. Kofi very seriously ends his promo with, “New. Day Rocks.” and I’m dying laughing at him.
Real sports fans at a real sporting event for real people and not uneducated brokes did “YEET” so WWE is very happy about that.
Backstage, Sheamus does pull-ups so that he can do a banger. Gunther does no pull-ups but then he jumps. He just jumps! He never knows when he might get booked.
King of the Ring: Sheamus vs Gunther
Here come two big boys who love to roughhouse. WELL GUESS WHAT THIS MATCH IS LIKE IMMEDIATELY! Gunther just overwhelming the older, slower Sheamus early, but Sheamus backdrops Gunther on the apron ahead of a commercial break so he’s in it.
We’ve got a cravat because this is European. The entire Sheamus vs Gunther feud has come off to me as a younger guy in Gunther, built to be a problem for Sheamus flat-out, but also Sheamus is now older and basically just battling to hang in there. Sheamus can do damage but it’s kind of a Rocky Balboa from Rocky Balboa thing, he can’t totally keep the pace anymore so his big shots have to REALLY count. But unlike Rocky fighting the comically named Mason “The Line” Dixon, Sheamus has to deal with Gunther, who has the toughness to absorb all that and give the fire back even harder. Sheamus has thudding power, Gunther has electric power with what he does.
The 10 Beats goes to 17 for Sheamus and the crowd is loving it. Kaiser gets involved and does some damage to Sheamus’ knee. McAfee calls him a “piece of German trash.” The referee is mad because he thinks Kaiser interfered, so he throws him out. A little unfair. You can’t call what you don’t see, brother. Another break as Sheamus screams at the ref to not stop it. WWE lads are so dramatic about this shit. When do matches ever get stopped by referees? It’s tremendously rare. I don’t think it’s even on the table here, Sheamus.
This isn’t their best match and in fact may be their worst, but it’s what you expect it will be, just a big, burly slugfest, and I think they execute well the idea that Sheamus is, as always, hanging in there, hanging in there, looking for the one big shot. The problem continues to be that it’s gonna take more than one big shot to beat Gunther in this style matchup with Sheamus. Sheamus winds up having to tap out to a half-crab because he’s just too broken down. ***¾
GRADE: B+
A little filler, but mostly just wrestling matches, and two that kicked some real ass, and I liked Natty-IYO and Lyra-Dakota, too. And when you have some Real Damn Good Wrestling as the foundation of your show, anything else tanking a bit is pretty forgivable.
And this did have some duds. Ivy Nile vs Zoey Stark was tough to get through and, listen, I really am a major CM Punk fan, but I think it might be time for him to evolve that “character” a little. The true greats can do that over time, but he’s still out here doing the same thing he’s done forever. He’s still a star and stuff, but some crowds are just not going to run with him on a promo like that, and it happened tonight.
The good vastly out-weighed the bad, though.
Three Stars of the Show
Ilja Dragunov: Gotta give him the top honor tonight, big Raw breakout match with Ricochet, which was fantastic and got his whole deal across effectively, Ricochet did a phenomenal job out there, too. If given a proper chance, I really think Ilja can make waves. He’s one of those guys too good to deny if they don’t just totally shit on him at some point.
Gunther: It is Gunther. He did Gunther, against Sheamus.
Natalya: The BOAT’s under-appreciated years roll on with another good match. This could have also been Lyra Valkyria, Dakota Kai, IYO, or even Liv Morgan, who I am finding very funny lately.