RAW (July 26th, 2022): A New Era (Allegedly) Begins

For whatever reason, I felt compelled to waste three hours of my life watching last Monday's edition of RAW, which is significant due to being the first RAW following the retirement/resignation of Vince McMahon and the ascension of Paul "Triple H" Levesque as the new head of WWE Creative. Also, the show was taking place in MSG, so it had to be special right?

First segment that opens in Miz and the Youtube guy brawling... that's followed by a CGI Roman Reigns figure that looks like ass. Fortunately, we've got a long Roman Reigns promo that saw Paul Heyman do most of the talking, who is interrupted by that Theory kid, who is taunted by Roman because "Daddy's not here anymore." This leads to Theory in a match against Drew McIntyre, who gets ambushed by Sheamus and friends, which prompts Bobby Lashley to come out and turn this into a TAG TEAM MATCH, PLAYA! And then I zoned out.

The rest of the show was just stuff that happened. Rey Mysterio celebrated 20 years in WWE by cutting a humble promo, followed by a tag match with him and his son Dominick beating Finn Balor and the Priest guy. This leads to a backstage bit where the Rhea girl pushes the Mysterio girl and I guess theyz haz match?

The more this show went on, the most I zoned out. All throughout the night, the dog is restless and needs to go. So I let her into the yard for a bit and she comes back ten minutes later. Finally, I take her for a long walk and by the time I came back, RAW was over.

I had the show DVR'd, but really, the best thing I could say about this episode of RAW is that it was largely inoffensive and there wasn't much in the way of stupid shit. It's still RAW, it's still three hours, and it's still a waste of time. Certainly didn't make me interested in this weekend's upcoming Summerslam show.

With that said, this show played out as I expected it to: business as usual. I'm sure those who regularly watch the show - my condolences, by the way - will be able to spot for any minor differences that are supposedly there, but those expecting this show to outright change overnight should tempered those expectations. HHH just got the head creative job and as good as his run on NXT has been, you can't expect those same results from day one. These things take time. Whether people have the patience to sit through it or not is another story.

I can say I watched the first RAW after Vince's retirement, but I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not. I am willing to give the new regime another shot in about a month or so, but for now, I'd say it's going to be a while before things start to feel different from the same old routine.