WWE RAW 8/07/2023: 3 Things We Hated And 3 Things We Loved

Welcome to Wrestling Inc.'s completely unbiased and definitely-not-still-mad-about-SummerSlam review of "WWE Raw!" With the biggest party of the summer in the company's rearview mirror, it was time for a fresh start, with new feuds, new matches, and new character interactions. Well, unless you're a major star in the women's division, in which case there's a good chance you didn't make the SummerSlam card and you're still working through your existing feud. Or if you're The Judgment Day, in which case you're back to internecine briefcase bickering. Or if you're Seth Rollins, who still can't get through a staredown with Cody Rhodes without someone interrupting. But there were some new things too! A New Day, for example!

Interestingly, the only segment WWE announced ahead of time was a promo segment featuring Becky Lynch, so this episode of "Raw" was a blank slate until it actually began to unfold. Want to know what happened? Check out our live coverage. Want to know what we think about what happened? Here are three things we hated and three things we loved about the 8/7/23 episode of "WWE Raw."

We are so, so happy to have The New Day back. We can't tell you have much we've missed them, and they put on a decent match with the Viking Raiders, so you'd think this would be a "loved." But there were also things about their return that bothered us. It didn't feel special enough, somehow — these guys are one of the greatest WWE teams of all time, and all they get is a random surprise entrance for the Viking Raiders' open challenge? It just seemed kind of perfunctory, and that bothered us. Furthermore, while the match was good, this feels like an instance where we would have been better served keeping the Raiders at home for the week, and throwing some jobbers in. It was odd to have The New Day make what should have been massive return and then immediately get into a competitive match with Erik and Ivar. Just felt like a squash would have been more effective.

Also ... where the hell is Big E? We thought we might see him when we read the report that New Day were coming back on "Raw," but nope, nowhere to be found. We understand that he can't wrestle right now and might not be able to wrestle again, but couldn't he be Woods' and Kingston's manager and/or hype man? He would be great at that! We assumed he hadn't been brought back to TV because Kofi was also hurt so the entire act had been shelved, but now they're back and he's not. What's the deal with that? We need Big E on our TV screen, dammit!

If it wasn't already obvious from SummerSlam that WWE is largely out of ideas, this week's opening segment was the most predictable piece of wrestling television you will ever see in your life. As soon as Cody Rhodes came out and started talking about feeling like he could beat anyone, it was obvious that Seth Rollins was going to interrupt him, and as soon as Seth Rollins interrupted him, it was obvious that Judgment Day was going to come out and interrupt them, and it was painfully obvious that this was all in the service of setting up a main event tag team match.

The match in question ended up being announced as Rhodes, Rollins, and Sami Zayn vs. Finn Balor, Damian Priest, and Dominik Mysterio. For context, last week's main event was Zayn and Rollins vs. Priest and Mysterio; the main event three weeks ago was Zayn and Kevin Owens vs. Priest and Mysterio, and the main event four weeks ago was Zayn, Owens, and Rollins vs. Balor, Priest, and Mysterio. Oh, and the main event of the June 19 episode was Zayn, Owens, and Rhodes vs. Balor, Priest, and Mysterio, the main event of the May 15 episode was Zayn and Owens vs. Balor and Priest, and the main event of the April 17 episode was Zayn, Owens, and Matt Riddle vs. Balor, Priest, and Mysterio. In case you were wondering how many times you've seen this match recently.

Now, to give WWE some credit, they did end up changing things at the last minute, hopefully due to a storyline injury and not an actual injury (we'll get to all that momentarily). But man, WWE could not be making it any more clear that the "Raw" roster, at least, is divided between people who are important enough to main event "Raw" with The Judgment Day and people who aren't. If nothing else, you'd think they would try and find a different way to set up these tag matches. When Sami Zayn gets announced for a "Raw" main event and our response is "What, again?" you might be spamming the Teddy Long button a little too often.

Is Sami Zayn getting attacked and taken out of the six-man main event getting a "hated" because it's Sami Zayn and we love him and we wanted to see him wrestle? Yes. Is it getting a "hated" because he was attacked by JD McDonagh, who was accused of physically abusing a woman during the Speaking Out movement back when he was called Jordan Devlin and WWE opted to change his name rather than fire him, and now it seems like he might be getting in on "Raw's" biggest ongoing angle in the form of The Judgment Day? Also yes. But mainly this is getting a "hated" because dear god look at Sami's elbow.

As soon as this segment aired, speculation began running wild that Zayn had been written out of the main event due to injury, which would put him in company with his fellow Undisputed Tag Team Champion, Kevin Owens, and his fractured rib, along with one half of their female counterparts, WWE Women's Tag Team Champion Sonya Deville, who is out indefinitely after tearing her ACL. Zayn did end up being involved in the main event segment, which was clearly just a vehicle for kicking off Rollins' next world title program, so it's possible he's fine — or at least, as fine as a wrestler ever gets until they've taken significant time off. But that elbow just looks nasty, man. Hopefully it's just really bad bursitis? Is that a bad thing to hope for?

Zayn's replacement, Shinsuke Nakamura, turning on Rollins at some point was almost as predictable as the opening promo parade turning into a tag match, but we can't complain about it because we're just so happy about it. Nakamura has been laboring quietly in WWE's midcard for waaaaaaaaay too long now — it's been five years since he had a match for a world championship — and he's just too damn good at wrestling to not be in the next tier up with Sami and Cody and the rest of them. He started the night by finally ending his weird low-key feud with Bronson Reed in a match that was sneakily awesome (you can hear the crowd, who couldn't get less of a damn when the match started, slowly get more into it until they are practically howling for the finish) and ended it by kneeing the World Heavyweight Champion in the face while everyone else's back was turned and sliding out of the ring almost before anyone had noticed. It was so good. WWE desperately needs to start elevating some lower card talent into higher positions, and this was a major step forward in that regard. Also, we couldn't help but note the poetry in Nakamura replacing Zayn, of all people, who was his opponent for his first (and still best) WWE match back in 2016.

Anything Rollins vs. Nakamura should rule in terms of in-ring, and if they get some build, presumably to a match at Payback in September, the feud should be a lot of fun too. We can't want to see these two complete weirdos try to out-dress, out-dance and/or out-intimidate each other. On a night when not enough of "Raw" felt fresh, the Nakamura stuff was massive.

Speaking of elevating talent, we are beyond thrilled that WWE is giving Chad Gable a renewed singles push, as he won a four-way match to become #1 contender to GUNTHER's Intercontinental title. The match — which also involved Ricochet, Matt Riddle, and Tommaso Ciampa — was predictably fantastic, but Gable in particular was showcased, and he was 100% the right person to win. Ricochet doesn't need either the IC title right now; Riddle does, but he's also a very recent GUNTHER challenger and is pretty hard to take seriously these days, which is good because he sucks. Ciampa would have been the second-best choice, but Gable already has a storyline with GUNTHER going back to last week, and after the way he's been anchoring "Raw" for the past several months, both inside and outside ring, he deserves the spotlight. Also, he got to win in his hometown! If anything could convince us beyond the shadow of a doubt that Vince McMahon is currently off somewhere recovering from spinal surgery, it's the fact that Chad Gable got to win in his hometown. Vince would never.

We're slightly less unsure about the other new aspect of this feud. If Ludwig Kaiser legitimately thinks Maxxine Dupri is good at wrestling and should be in the stable that's all about wrestling being sacred instead of the comedic weirdo gang, that's fine. If this starts to get into stalker/voyeur territory, we are out, especially because it's impossible for us to believe that a member of Imperium has ever been sexually aroused by anything, except possibly THE RING. Anyway, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. For now, we're just going to sit here and fantasy book Gable winning the Intercontinental Championship just before GUNTHER breaks Honky Tonk Man's all-time record, because that would be amazing.

No, really, this isn't a bit. We really do just continue to roll our eyes at all things LA Knight. If social media is anything to go by, his promo segment with The Miz was three consecutive flame emojis, and on the one hand we sort of understand why, given the mic skills of the men in question (though we couldn't help but notice that Knight did the verbal equivalent of falling off the top turnbuckle at one point). On the other hand ... we're sorry, we just cannot take this seriously. For starters, Knight and Miz look like the exact same person. Knight is like a Miz clone, or an alternate version of The Miz from a dimension where the "Hoo-Rah" catchphrase inexplicably got over. Knight was even on The Rock's reality show, "The Hero," in 2013! He was the first one eliminated, in case you were wondering. YEAH.

At any rate, we had something of a hard time with Miz doing the old Hardcore Holly "I am a grizzled veteran of this industry and you will respect me" thing with a 40-year-old who's only two years younger than him, and Knight saying he'd spent the last 20 years "becoming dangerous" or whatever is objectively hilarious. Where exactly did you become dangerous, LA? In Championship Wrestling From Hollywood? During your first "WWE NXT" stint where you didn't even make it to television, even as a jobber? In Impact, who fired you after you refused to lose to Tessa Blanchard because that's how much of a tough guy you are? Or in Billy Corgan's NWA, where you were "quietly released" from your contract for reasons unknown? Is the fact that you referenced your actual history of refusing to play nice with your co-workers supposed to make us think you're cool? Because this might be an us problem, but we are never, ever going to think the man who portrayed Eli Drake is cool. Never.

But hey, we hope everyone else enjoys the Knight/Miz feud earnestly while we go ahead and enjoy it ironically. There may come a day when we actually like something Knight does in the way we're supposed to like it, but it is not this day!

Sadly, there was but a single women's match on this three-hour episode of "Raw" — though we should acknowledge Raquel Rodriguez' attack on Rhea Ripley, not least because it seems to have finally gotten Candice LeRae and Indi Hartwell back on TV — but it was our favorite segment of the night, so we'll do what more wrestling shows should do more often and close with it. What started off as a fairly boilerplate promo segment between Becky Lynch and Zoey Stark got a whole lot more interesting pretty damn quick when Shayna Baszler showed up. Sporting a black eye and more physical evidence that she and Ronda Rousey were basically actually fighting at SummerSlam in a match you should all have appreciated more, Baszler came out for a very symbol reason: Stark referred to herself as the baddest woman on the roster, and as the person who seems to have functionally retired Ronda Rousey, Baszler took issue.

That match that followed was really, really fun — Baszler can go when you give her some actual match time, and Stark just already feels like a fully-realized member of the main roster. The pairing with Trish Stratus has done a lot for her, but she also wrestles like she belongs on the main roster, just complete confidence at all times. That goes for her promo work, too. She's really fantastic. Of course, that didn't stop Baszler from choking her out (which is fine, Stark is banned from ringside next week anyway for Becky vs. Trish, she can sell the damage) and now it seems like she might be renewing hostilities with Lynch soon, which, yes please. Maybe this time without the weird Vince gimmick nonsense. Shayna walking around calling herself "the Baddest Woman on the Planet" and using Rousey's finishing moves rules. We hope everyone gets hurt.

Best part of this segment, though? Lynch watching the match from ringside with a pitcher of lemonade, two nights after Paul Levesque's "take the lemons and make lemonade" comments from the post-show press conference of the PLE that had time for a no-stakes 25-man battle royal but not for Lynch vs. Stratus. Becky is the best.