Review: WWE Raw (6-16-2025)
Live from Green Bay! We’ve got Corey Graves here in place of Pat McAfee and things are looking up for once.
Matches
Asuka vs Raquel Rodriguez vs Ivy Nile vs Stephanie Vaquer: Queen of the Ring. Asuka is back! Gets a big, lights-out entrance, and it’s great to hear that theme again and see one of my absolute favorite wrestlers of this current century. Really of all time, for me personally. Cole says Asuka and Vaquer are “both established stars in Japan,” which isn’t wrong, but is also not really, like — whatever, it doesn’t matter. Just say shit. Ivy making some strides of late. Raquel is exactly what Raquel is, but she’ll eat a shot if the other person throws a hard one, you can say that. Asuka doesn’t look too rusty at all — I mean, a little, naturally, but still like she’s got plenty in the tank if used right. And Vaquer is simply one of the best on the planet right now, this is a woman just bursting at the seams with confidence in herself, and the way The WWE Universe have taken to her both with NXT and main roster, I don’t think there’s any stopping her from being a top star. This gets time and there’s some great promise with Vaquer and Asuka together, but Paul Creative dips into his big and comes up with yet another interference/distraction finish for one of these matches. This time it’s Rhea Ripley preventing Raquel from winning, allowing Asuka to sneak the win on the Ripley-decimated Rodriguez. Asuka does an ass smash finisher that “she is calling the Empress Impact.” I hear she calls it the Rear View. ***
Asuka gets to talk briefly after the match and confirms that she plans to win Queen of the Ring. Good to know! Bye!
AJ Styles vs JD McDonagh: On paper this looks exactly like another passable+ AJ Styles TV match of the current day, and bingo bango, that’s exactly what it is. McDonagh is a very game guy who does his best to make the most of AJ’s current style, which honestly, I think he’s still quite good because he’s so genuinely great that he can be 60 percent of his peak self and still better than most people, but he is in the middle of adjusting. I mean the man is almost 50 and they’ve kind of limiting his match times regularly since the return, to the point that it can’t really be a coincidence and there might be something to not having him push into third gear too often. Cole’s brain buffers on the finish when a full beat after a clear three-count, he says, “Kickout! No! Styles wins!” ***¼
Later, Nick Aldis finally gives Styles an IC title match with Dominik Mysterio at Night of Champions.
Liv Morgan vs Kairi Sane: Morgan dislocates her shoulder basically immediately. That sucks for every obvious reason. Just a little landing gone wrong, the kind of thing that could happen at any moment. Kairi wins! She runs the ropes like the Ultimate Warrior which, I mean, she’s gotta do something. Obviously she’s probably not actually happy but she doesn’t want to kill the vibe, either.
Bronson Reed vs Sheamus vs Rusev vs Jey Uso: You can’t have Jey not win this one after the title loss last week, not with the alternatives being, like, those guys. I mean, I wouldn’t mind seeing Cody vs Reed but there’s real story in Uso winning here to get a little confidence back, then getting checked again by Cody — or maybe getting some unwanted help in beating Cody. I am mainly interested in the Reed vs Rusev potential here, but I say that shit and then I actually watch Sheamus work and get fired up about him all over again. It’s every time, and been that way for years. Yeah, he ain’t gonna really do shit anymore, but he still rules so hard. This is pretty good, all these four-ways have basically been the same along their gender lines. Some real good physicality in here as you’d expect of the lineup, and Jey is really strong as the match’s physical underdog if obviously the biggest star by six country miles. Sheamus finds himself in a real fight trying to bully the bully, because Rusev, while not explicitly in WWE, still has the air of a man driven by a psychotic person’s level of religious fervor, and that sort of person doesn’t just back down from being punched in the nose once. Reed’s real good when he’s kicking ass and as always bumps great when that’s the play, and he doesn’t overdo that stuff, either. We get interference from Bron Breakker, also Sami Zayn, and then ultimately it’s LA Knight costing the Heyman Guy the match and handing Uso the win. What do you know! Paul Creative creates once more. ***½
Post-match, Seth Rollins arrives, but before he can do much of anything, Cody Rhodes is there to stop him. They stare at each other and Rollins shits his pants, I think. Violently. No physicality. Rhodes and Uso meet in the semifinals but share a moment of respect.
Other Stuff
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Big thing up top: Gunther is here. He is once again WWE’s second-most important men’s champion. By gum, he’s got his Gunther confidence back. Decent little promo bit from him, and he says he’s ready for Seth Rollins any time. Instead,
It’s Goldberg. He walks to the ring with the obvious limited mobility of a 58-year-old who has kept a lot of muscle packed on after many years as an athlete both competitive and otherwise. Says he’s just here to tell Gunther he’s proud of him, but he also remembers Gunther disrespecting him in Atlanta, and Goldberg will end what Gunther started in the same city on July 12 at Saturday Night’s Main Event. They’ve got this man Gunther wrestling punters and senior citizens between giving Jey Uso a career.
I just want to again say that the amount of pretty much dead air that fills the run time of these shows is staggering. Incredibly noticeable when you don’t watch live. “An hour” flies the fuck by when you zip past all the ads, in-house ads, and video packages and whatnot.
Liv Morgan kicks off the show with Dominik Mysterio. We get a replay of Morgan laying out Nikki Bella last week, and word that later tonight Liv will face Kairi Sane. The “overwhelming boos” for Dominik are partially back because they’ve decided to go back to that. He says nothing after she says nothing and now she goes back to saying nothing. Morgan deftly avoids doing a racist accent when she does an impression of Iyo Sky, but you could kinda tell the thought passed through her mind. She wants a world title rematch and Iyo Sky does answer the light call-out.
Liv reckons she has Iyo’s number but Iyo says she “stole” Dominik because the two things are great for talking points. The idea here is Liv wants Iyo to just hand over the belt, so Iyo tosses it to her then dropkicks her. Dominik also gets an Iyo kick.
New Day come out here and say a bunch of nothing as usual.
Judgment Day have the same goddamn tension-filled conversation they’ve had for months.
Sheamus is here. Natalya points out that she is also a veteran. Akira Tozawa wants Sheamus to kick Rusev’s ass. Maxxine Dupri is also there!
That Bayley theme is still awful for a babyface. Then she embarrasses herself by trying to get the crowd to sing, thinking they’re just on the cusp of it, and boy does that not happen. Bayley has become kind of embarrassing in general, I think. Like, I don’t know, man, whatever legitimacy she ever had about all this Passion talk and shit is just so obviously talk and nothing more now. She gives off zero actual passion anymore, it’s just what The Character Bayley is supposed to be like, so she says it. Think the hair color is also really bad but that’s just me being a bitch, maybe.
Becky Lynch is here in a Bears jacket because she is married to Iowa’s own Seth Rollins and we are in Green Bay. Lynch was prepared, noting Chicago’s 24-22 win in week 18 last season when the Packers rested a lot of their key players.
Lynch goes lame with an over-aggressive You People bit that to date with this heel run she’s avoided, but maybe she thinks John Cena is just killing it right now. It occurs to me that I am just not very interested in watching these two hook it up in 2025. I am, in fact, quite ready for some serious division turnover, which the company is flirting with but, well, we’ll see. Bayley winds up dropping Becky to end the bit.
Later, Nick Aldis gives Bayley an IC title match with Becky Lynch next week. Bayley then catches up with Lyra Valkyria. Bayley did not answer Lyra’s texts or calls, but you gotta understand, she was having a rough time, see. CM Punk has truly infected this locker room.
Cathy Kelley tells Jey Uso that he suffered a “minor setback” last week when he lost the world title to Gunther. A MINOR SETBACK? God, do we have to treat the characters like babies now, too? It should really matter to him! Jey believes it’s “one and one” now with Gunther, disregarding the first three times Gunther beat him.
More with Sami Zayn and Karrion Kross. Can we get a next step out of this already?