Monday Night Raw (5/5)

Joe's gonna squeeze Paul's head until it's back to the same size as his face.

A middling Raw after a disappointing Extreme Rules, with few answers to many of my post-EXR questions, and the answers we did get were, for the most part, not great.


Bray Wyatt declared his intent to wreak spooky vengeance on the four other competitors from the five-way on Sunday, then immediately lost to Roman Reigns because Roman Reigns and because Bray Wyatt.

The Hardyz aren't here because Matt's wife is super-pregnant, so instead Shesaro squash Heath Slater while Rhyno watches and cut a generic new heel champ promo.

Austin Aries is nowhere to be seen, so it's Neville-TJP drama instead. I assume this is going to be a sympathetic face turn for TJP and then a loss on the resulting 205 Live match, unless Aries can somehow cost Neville the belt and then beat TJP for the title?

Alexa Bliss also has to face the fellow heel she promised a title shot to for protection. I hadn't noticed the parallel before because they ignored the women's version of that storyline for about a month. Bliss gets herself disqualified almost instantly.

Dean Ambrose and the Miz are still a thing, but probably not for long. Ambrose ruins Miz's celebration in fairly entertaining fashion, but they seem to be angling towards Ambrose-Drifter instead. No idea who Miz's next opponent will be unless it's a post-Titus re-faced Apollo Crews.

Speaking of which, they seem to be going with "Crews dabbles with Titus for a bit and then decides against it", which is certainly compelling drama. Why this angle had Akira Tozawa's name in its mouth this week is beyond me, except that they couldn't think of anyone else for the inevitable tag match?

Enzo and Cass continue to tease a breakup, with Cass getting attacked t his week, leading to Cass teaming with Big Show, leading to "professional" jealousy from Cass.

Samoa Joe had the segment of the night, though, with an intense proo on Lesnar that totally worked, followed by a counterpromo from Heyman that worked, followed by an off-mic confrontation leading to Joe choking out Heyman, because, let's face it, Joe has the only move anyone can do on Heyman without Heyman dying. By comparison, Joe's match with Rollins was pointless and led to a Joe win via Spookyference.