WWE RAW 8/31/2026: 3 Things We Hated & 3 Things We Loved

Welcome to Wrestling Inc.'s weekly review of "WWE Raw," the show that this week saw Penta defeat his brother Fenix to earn a shot at Roman Reigns and the World Heavyweight Championship. We have some thoughts about that here in the column this week, as well as thoughts about Reigns' confrontation with LA Knight, Raquel Rodriguez' women's Intercontinental title defense against Sol Ruca, and much more!

As always, if you missed the show, you can catch up on everything that went down Monday night by checking out our "WWE Raw" 8/31/26 results page. We cover every match and every segment there, as opposed to here, where we only cover the matches and segments that gave us a particularly positive or particularly negative feeling — with apologies to Dragon Lee vs. Ethan Page. In other words, here are three things we hated and three things we loved about the 8/31/26 episode of "WWE Raw!"

There's nothing wrong with WWE deciding to kick off this "Raw" with something attention grabbing in OTM and Royce Keys taking out The Usos in the parking lot by launching a bloody attack on them if they want to run it. There's also nothing wrong with Jacob Fatu subsequently appearing at ringside to send a message to OTM and Keys for their attack on his Bloodline stablemates if they want to run that as well. There is a problem with where they chose to place it on this episode of "Raw," as it really took the attention away from Sol Ruca and Raquel Rodriguez's Women's Intercontinental Championship match to place it back on The Bloodline, Keys, and OTM.

Considering that this particular show had no commercials at all when it was initially released, WWE has absolutely no excuse at all for not giving OTM and Keys' attack on The Usos some time of its own at the top of the show instead of having it interspersed with Ruca and Rodriguez's entrance. I get that they were going for the whole thing being "breaking news", but that still would've happened regardless of if it was its own thing or interspersed with the women. It entirely took the focus off what should've been viewed as an important title match, and felt like the women's division was being pushed aside for the main event men's division instead. It also made it harder to follow what was happening with OTM, Keys, and The Bloodline, and was a confusing mess that did not need to happen at all.

Written by Olivia Quinlan

I've been known to complain about Sol Ruca's performance on the main roster after loving her work in "WWE NXT," but she's been upping her game lately. She had a great match, perhaps her best on the main roster, against Lyra Valkyria two weeks ago, and tonight, she had a good showing against Women's Intercontinental Champion Raquel Rodriguez. I've praised Rodriguez's work in recent memory, as well, and she and her challenger worked really well together tonight, even if the match was a bit too short.

The match had a wonky finish thanks to inference from Judgment Day's Liv Morgan and Roxanne Perez, as well as Valkyria, but before that, Ruca and Rodriguez had a solid, fast-paced bout where they just couldn't keep one another down. They also didn't let an interruption by an irate Jacob Fatu distract them too much, and by the time they got cooking, I almost forgot how annoyed I was that WWE decided to interrupt them with the Bloodline saga.

Rodriguez showed off her power throughout, and Ruca showcased her gymnastic ability. At one point, Ruca attempted a springboard cross body, and Rodriguez basically swatted her out of the air, which looked good. Ruca also had good counters to the offense of Rodriguez, wriggling off the bigger woman's shoulders when the champion had her up on the apron, then coming through the bottom rope to hit her with a powerbomb to the floor.

It wouldn't be a Rodriguez match without interference from Women's World Champion Liv Morgan and Roxanne Perez, but Ruca took them out with a beautiful corkscrew moonsault to the outside. When she attempted the Sol Snatcher back in the ring, however, it was Valkyria who met her on the ropes to knock her down, sending her into a Tejana Bomb from Rodriguez for the win. While I hate messy interference finishes like this, I actually didn't mind this one too much, as the match was solid, and it seems like WWE is going to further the feud between Ruca and Valkyria.

Valkyria desperately needs something to do, and her bout with Ruca was so good a few weeks ago, I don't mind seeing them run it back to determine a number one contender for the Women's IC title. There wasn't much to really like about "Raw" tonight, but I do love when the women come through, and this was pretty solid all around, even with Judgment Day involvement.

Written by Daisy Ruth

I'm sure World Heavyweight Champion Roman Reigns and LA Knight are going to officially face off one-on-one at Money in the Bank in New Orleans, but that event isn't until October 10, so we have well over a month to go until what could be the first of a few matches between these two. It's starting to feel like a stagnant struggle to get through as a viewer, though I hope these backstage attacks lead to something interesting in the coming weeks, assuming Knight is the target of one.

Both Reigns and Knight are good to great on the microphone, but these constant promos and face-to-faces on the weeks Reigns is on "Raw" are getting old fast. Tonight, Reigns basically went out there to complain about Knight's complaining that he hasn't gotten a title match, and the majority of this segment was pointless. The champion did acknowledge (no pun intended) that he should be out there talking about Rey Fenix and Penta and the tournament to determine his luchador opponent at "Raw" in Mexico City. Before he could get more into that, however, he switched gears to complain about those who just "b**** and moan and complain" for title shots all the time.

He complained about Solo Sikoa for a bit before getting to Knight, who eventually came out to confront him, and Knight did have a good line about not realizing that "OTC" stood for "One Tremendous Coward." They argued back-and-forth for a bit, and it just wasn't interesting. Reigns' next challenger is Penta, though it's obvious poor Penta isn't going to win in Mexico City, and then, we have a month before we get to New Orleans for Money in the Bank, where Knight will more than likely get his title shot.

I doubt Reigns is on "Raw" next week before wrestling in Mexico City, so at least we won't have to deal with another pointless promo segment between the pair next week, though I wouldn't be surprised if Knight got one of his own if he's not mysteriously taken out backstage like Solo Sikoa (likely by Jacob Fatu), or brutalized by Royce Keys and OTM like the Usos.

The backstage attacks were the only interesting thing about the Bloodline saga tonight, so hopefully that part of the story continues next week. The Reigns part of all this is the most boring right now, however, which isn't great when he's the one holding the World Heavyweight Championship.

Written by Daisy Ruth

Modern day professional wrestling is built on a formula of a naive babyface trusting another babyface only for said babyface to inevitably betray them at some point in a move that the naive babyface really should've seen coming from the beginning. We see it happen in storylines both inside and outside of WWE time and time again, so it's nice to see WWE actually flip the script with Stephanie Vaquer and Becky Lynch on their respective intertwined quests to win back the Women's World Championship.

It was refreshing to see the babyface Vaquer outright tell the newly babyface Lynch in their backstage that she didn't trust her despite their mutual respect for one another and Lynch helping out Vaquer when Judgment Day tried to interfere in her match against Roxanne Perez on the August 24 episode of "Raw." Both women came off looking really good, showing Vaquer to be a rare example of a smart wrestler and Lynch's more empathetic attitude as a confident babyface to make what could've been a throw-away backstage into something that was quite compelling. I also liked the little touch of the cocky and heel Liv Morgan brushing off both Lynch and Vaquer as her next challengers in the Judgment Day backstage that followed this one. Not only was it great character work, but there's no reason her character shouldn't feel on top of the world as Women's World Champion right now with her successful defense against IYO SKY at WWE SummerSlam.

Written by Olivia Quinlan

Rather than coming up with something different or in any way interesting, WWE opted to have Dominik Mysterio face Je'Von Evans, JD McDonagh interfere for a disqualification, Joe Hendry make a run-in, and Adam Pearce book a tag team match between the aforementioned parties.

That was about as fun as one could imagine it was. Mysterio working literally the same way he has been working since turning heel, no deviations or evolution of any kind. McDonagh being McDonagh. Joe Hendry being the limited viral sensation he is. And Evans once again stuck in a purgatory plainly unbecoming of the wrestler he is.

Following in that vein, Mysterio and McDonagh got the win in the most milquetoast of ways. There can perhaps be no better example of 50:50 booking than having someone win via disqualification, have the match restarted, and then lose it. Side note: Where was Big Cass? Evans has not been able to breathe in recent weeks because of Cass. Now he got his singles win last week, Cass was nowhere to be seen.

It's just the brazenness to book in such a transparently lazy way and show absolutely no recourse. What is the actual purpose of the men's Judgment Day? The women have a clear goal: protect Liv Morgan and collect the titles. Mysterio and McDonagh just seem to be floating around facing whichever babyfaces dared to be friendly to Rey Mysterio. They're a joke that continually plays out with the exact same punchline week in and week out.

It wouldn't feel so egregious if WWE wasn't chock full of good-to-great wrestlers with the ability to actually bring something compelling to the table. If WWE wasn't a multi-billion dollar company with the resources to create something better. If WWE's head of creative wasn't constantly touting himself as the architect to some grandiose never-ending story.

It can be better. Yet the choice is made to sanitize any innovation or individuality from the product and sell such a hollow, heartless show as destination programming. For every bright spark there are countless segments like these, a reminder that at some point backstage, someone is cutting corners because screw it, people will watch anyway.

Written by Max Everett

Whenever the Lucha Brothers cross paths in singles action it yields a great time, and it was no different when they did it for the first time in WWE. From the moment the tournament was booked it felt too easy to make this the final, but that was only half the battle. They still had to live up to the expectation.

It was too easy to watch this match and imagine it was going down in the dim-lighted Lucha Underground temple, with the two men bringing the best out of one another once more and exhausting their movesets in the name of being the better brother. The match was built around the idea of the Mexican Musclebuster and Destroyer being killshots, allowing each competitor to work with the goal of hitting their killshot while avoiding the other.

With that came a deluge of inventive counters and maneuvers. Penta needed to bring back the Sacrifice and put his brother through a table before he finally got his off. Before that, Fenix had flipped out of an avalanche Destroyer and Penta had turned a Musclebuster attempt into a Penta Driver. It was a game of who had the answers until they didn't, knitted together with some of the most fluid action wrestling has to offer.

The added drama of Fenix calling for his brother to finish it — "Come on! Kill me!" — just helped to cement the bout as the spectacle it was; a reminder that brother vs. brother has been a timeless story since Cain and Abel. Penta will now go on to face Roman Reigns in a match he is sure to lose. But it cannot be said that that match is not intriguing. If it is anything like the match between Penta and Fenix, then it is sure to be a good time in Mexico City.

Written by Max Everett