WWE RAW 7/15/2024: 3 Things We Hated And 3 Things We Loved

Welcome to Wrestling Inc.'s weekly review of "WWE Raw," the show where Erick Rowan can just decide to make us cry whenever he wants to, apparently. There was actually a good amount of good Wyatt Sicks/Chad Gable content on this episode, and we have very strong feelings about all of it, which is what you will find in this column. No objectivity here — you'll find that on our "Raw" results page, along with all the stuff we're not going to talk about here because we only have six entries available to us and "Raw" is somehow still three hours long.

With that in mind, how did the WINC staff feel about GUNTHER's promo on Damian Priest? How do we think the Sonya Deville/Shayna Baszler/Zoey Stark trio is working out so far? And most importantly — seriously, how hard did we cry during the Erick Rowan thing? And when Bo Dallas started doing the Luke Harper "yeah-yeah-yeah" thing and posing like Bray Wyatt? Tears. Here are three things we hated and three things we loved about the 7/15/24 episode of "WWE Raw."

I'm almost convinced WWE thinks it's 2004 rather than 2024 with some of the segments they've been airing across their programming, especially the in-ring confrontation between Damian Priest and GUNTHER.

Watching GUNTHER tell Priest he wasn't worthy of being World Heavyweight Champion and call him "street trash" (a direct quote) for working from the bottom up made for an awkward and uncomfortable experience as a viewer. I couldn't help but to think back to the infamous exchange between Triple H and Booker T leading up to their WrestleMania 19 match in which Triple H told Booker that "someone like [you]" shouldn't be the champion. When you consider that Triple H is now in charge of WWE creative, it makes the parallel even more apparent, and it's an atrocious look on both him and WWE as a whole.

Heading into their title match at SummerSlam, it should be a priority for WWE to keep Priest looking strong as the champion and GUNTHER looking strong as his challenger. This segment did very little to help that, and if anything, it made GUNTHER look much weaker as Priest's challenger with the implications it carried. Priest is not just one of the biggest stars in WWE, but he's also a world champion, and his promo segments related to the title should be given the same thought and care of that of Cody Rhodes or Roman Reigns, rather than degrading stuff like this.

Written by Olivia Quinlan

Last week, I raved about the newly-formed trio of Shayna Baszler, Sonya Deville, and Zoey Stark, and based on their second appearance of the night, with Baszler and Stark taking care of business against Kayden Carter and Katana Chance, nothing there seems to be amiss this early on. In fact, I think Deville as a mouthpiece for the tag team of Baszler and Stark could be the missing element in what otherwise hasn't worked (at least for me) with those two to this point. But Deville is more than just a mouthpiece and though it was great to see her compete in a singles match for the first time in more than 13 months (and a match of any sort for the first time in nearly a full year), it didn't really accomplish a whole lot. If anything, it was another notch down the ladder for someone who doesn't deserve as much in Zelina Vega. Sure, she got some backstage time before and after the minute-and-five-seconds long contest but for someone who was on fire heading into her (then-SmackDown Women's) title match against Rhea Ripley at Backlash 2023 (where she probably should have won, honestly), there's no ignoring the incredible amount of steam she's lost since then.

Miring in LWO obscurity aside (all of those talents involved deserve more as well), Monday's match with Deville was Vega's fourth televised singles match in all of 2024 and she's lost them all. That this one lasted barely over a minute adds insult to the injury angle that she's now selling after Baszler ravaged her arm to set up Deville's win. Post-Ripley in 2023 wasn't much better for Vega either, playing "win one, lose one" all the while, which boosts the obviousness of her unfortunate decline.

On the bright side, I'll hope that she gets some time off with this storyline injury, only to come back with a vengeance and get a real shot at a solid run. But the truth is, WWE probably missed the boat on Vega when they didn't pull the trigger on her more than a year ago in Puerto Rico, so in the grand scheme of things, these 65 seconds are just a drop in the bucket at this point — a bucket that, for Vega, needs to be dumped out and prepped for starting over if there's any hope for her reversing course on the aforementioned ladder.

Written by Jon Jordan

If you were a fan of Shayna Baszler during her "NXT" run, few things have been more frustrating than watching "The Queen of Spades" get shuffled off into dead-end tag team after dead-end tag team. I thought she was finally getting a singles push after she retired Ronda Rousey, but no — she just ended up in another tag team, this time with Zoey Stark, and for a while there it was looking like another dead-end.

Adding Sonya Deville to the mix, however, has provided some crucial rejuvenation to the Baszler/Stark team, and despite Deville's woeful in-ring return this week, Baszler and Stark had a much more compelling showing in tag action against Katana Chance and Kayden Carter. Part of it is that Deville brings something to the table that neither of the others have — not mic skills, necessarily, because Baszler at least has those, but a specific kind of pro wrestling charisma that Baszler and Stark lack. I'm hardly opposed to Deville working her way back into ring shape, but her acting as the manager for this team of stoic murder-grapplers adds a fun contrasting dynamic to the act, whereas before Baszler and Stark simply lacked personality.

The other part, though, is the simple fact that they went from a tag team to a trio. WWE has very little respect for tag teams, and unless both members are already established singles stars, being in a tag team during the Paul Levesque Era largely seems like a fast pass to career obscurity until the team inevitably breaks up. Trios, on the other hand, tend to get booked much more strongly, from The Shield to The New Day to the original Bloodline. And the big stars aren't even necessarily immune from this. Remember when Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens were main-eventing "Raw" every week as the tag champs — but usually in a six-man tag with Seth Rollins or Cody Rhodes? Bianca Belair and Jade Cargill are massive stars, but they always feel strongest with Naomi as their third; without her, they were just another tag team. I'm not saying this because I like it, I'm saying it because it's true (and the funniest part is that WWE has four sets of tag titles but no trios championship).

Anyway, congratulations to Stark and Baszler for finally making a friend and suddenly becoming relevant in the women's division again. Support tag team wrestling!

Written by Miles Schneiderman

Over the last few weeks, Nikki Cross has provided VHS tapes to Pat McAfee and Michael Cole that featured emotional conversations with Bo Dallas and Uncle Howdy. I've been hoping that the tapes would eventually feature each member of the Wyatt Sicks to explain their "why" — on this week's episode, we finally heard from Erick Rowan, and it was just as heartbreaking as one would have expected.

The video starts with Uncle Howdy asking a single question: "How have you been?" Rowan responds that the last few years have been hard.

"You know, I used to have a family," he says. "We were unstoppable, inseparable." An emotional Rowan then says the whole world changed when he lost a brother who believed in him.

"It knocked me on my a**, I'm not going to lie," he admits.

Rowan explains that he was eventually able to pick himself up and move forward, but when he finally felt stable again, he endured the loss of his other brother. As he reflected, he begins to cry.

"I had no more family. No more will," he says. "I fell down a well. I couldn't get out. I didn't want to get out. Why? Why would I want to get out?" He describes feeling catatonic and unable to move.

Off camera, Rowan's old mask from the Wyatt Family is tossed to him while he's asked how it makes him feel. Rowan exhales deeply before saying "It gives me hope." When he was at his lowest, Uncle Howdy reached out to him and offered his hand. Rowan said accepting the help gave him purpose: "A purpose to help those like myself." Looking at the mask, he says, "We're going to take our broken hearts and make some beautiful art."

Besides Dallas, Rowan was the one many of us wanted to hear from. I'm glad Rowan was able to discuss both Brodie Lee and Bray Wyatt. Losing Lee is just as important to his "why" as Bray is. He also has another layer of motivation that the others may not, in losing both members of the Wyatt Family so closely together.

So far, this story has been handled exceptionally well. It honors everyone's relationships and allows them to tell the story that they want while working as one unit. Each week, we get closer to understanding the motivation of the Wyatt Sicks as they work through their grief and their pain.

Written by Samantha Schipman

The saga of The Wyatt Sicks is the most compelling part of WWE programming right now and it just keeps getting better, with more layers to it, week by week. But every good story needs an adversary for its primary players and Chad Gable has been absolutely perfect for this group since their pseudo-murderous debut. As the paranoid victim following that initial attack, as the abusive Alpha Academy leader now desperate for backup from his former comrades, as the guy going back to the well in recruiting The Creed Brothers (likely sweetening his previous overtures after being spurned by Otis and company), as the supersleuth who miraculously uncovered Bo Dallas as the true identity of Uncle Howdy — and hell, even as that initial bludgeonee, he's crushed it all.

In the midst of all that, he's challenged for the Intercontinental Championship, competed admirably in a Money in the Bank ladder match, and this week, shifted his character once more, setting the effects of his previous encounters with The Wyatt Sicks to the side to call out Dallas, orchestrate an attack from The Creeds as he made his way down the ramp, participate in the ensuing beatdown, and enable the further evolution of the new incarnation of Dallas, all while surely setting up an eventual showdown with some or all of The Sicks (but please, not too soon, because everything they're doing so far is perfect too).

On the real life side of all of this, Gable's contract status was up in the air until recently as well, and none of that affected his participation and performance in any of this. WWE knew what it was doing in locking this guy up and he is simply killing it. Unfortunately for him, he'll probably be killed by Uncle Howdy and friends again before too long here but surely, after that — after all of this — he'll be rewarded with the title run so many of us thought he had coming for a long while now.

Written by Jon Jordan

There were several notable developments on this episode of "WWE Raw" — Pete Dunne turned heel, The Wyatt Sicks got in the ring for the first time (with an unmasked Bo Dallas, no less) and GUNTHER and Damian Priest finally kicked off their SummerSlam feud, for better or for worse. Beyond that, though, not many things actually happened this week, and several storylines feel like they're kind of treading water.

Most notably, the Rhea Ripley/Liv Morgan/Dominik Mysterio love triangle didn't really go anywhere this week, aside from officially declaring Ripley vs. Morgan for SummerSlam, which everyone knew was happening. The backstage Judgment Day segments were fun, particularly the one involving Jey Uso, but the match itself followed the same basic formula this storyline has followed for a while, which is "Liv or Dominik has a match, the other interferes, and they wind up on the ground on top of each other." I guess Liv rolled Dom over so she was on top this time, so ... progress? Naturally this brought out Ripley, but last week's Liv/Dom content also brought out Ripley, and Liv got away again just like she did before. Meanwhile, it doesn't totally seem as though the Ripley/Mysterio relationship is over, meaning another potentially avenue of story progress has been walled up for the time being. I think I get why they're doing this, and it all probably makes sense (I'm assuming Dom screws over Ripley in her title match with Liv) but we're still a few weeks away from the fireworks factory and the same match finish with minor tweaks is getting even staler than it already was.

Meanwhile, in the main event, Bron Breakker causes yet another disqualification finish and we get the same old "running around the ring spear" bit that we've been getting for a while now. Drew McIntyre also remains suspended because he wouldn't apologize to some referees, a stall tactic if I've ever seen one, and Damage CTRL was absent from the episode entirely (maybe IYO SKY was still jet-lagged from working Marigold). It all added up to a show that didn't exactly sink, but at several points refused to swim.

Written by Miles Schneiderman