WWE Raw – April 29, 2019 (Review)

Overall Rating for the Show (From best to worst: RawSome, Cor, AvRAWge, Poor and RawFul)

If ever there was a case study in why Raw should be reduced to a two-hour runtime, this was it.

For the first 90 minutes, Raw looked destined to be heading towards the lowest possible rating. The show was directionless, riddled with painful announcements, awful gimmick changes and pointless matches. Alexa Bliss revealing the names of the men and women representing the red brand in the MITB ladder match was particularly deflating, as it all just felt like a missed opportunity. This was a three-hour show – surely there’s a more engaging way of deciding competitors than having their names read off a list by a fellow wrestler.

Almost as bad was Bobby Lashley’s new gimmick (in which he refers to himself in the third person), as well as The Usos releasing footage of The Revival shaving one another’s backs.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bw3avpkgWPQ/

But around the midpoint of the show, things started to pick up. Becky Lynch injected some energy into the night with a good promo, and was met with equal passion from the crowd. The Viking Raiders, Lacey Evans and Rey Mysterio were made to look good in their segments too. And we got the next instalment of the increasingly great Firefly Fun House.

Unfortunately the momentum couldn’t quite be maintained until the show’s end, as the final few segments included a poor tag match and a run-of-the-mill contract signing.

With that sad, this truly was an episode of two contrasting halves this week. Half of Raw was absolutely abysmal, with the latter portion generally passable to good. If the show had stuck the landing, I’d be tempted to move it up another rank. But it couldn’t quite pull it off. So, in that context, this week’s Raw is Poor.

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