Sheamus and Keith Lee Interrupted WWE Champion Drew McIntyre; Lee def. Sheamus in a WWE Championship No. 1 Contender's MatchTom Phillips and McIntyre starting Raw by saying, "It's Monday, you know what that means" as a tribute to the late, great Luke Harper was wonderful. The rest of the segment was good and further established tension between the three men. Lee and Sheamus had a hard-hitting affair and Lee winning was the right call. WWE should hold off on Sheamus vs. McIntyre until at least Royal Rumble, while we never got a definitive finish to McIntyre vs. Lee back in September. Their WWE Championship clash next week should rectify that.
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Joe Keys and Dante Caballero def. Eric Martin and Ken Dixon in an ROH Dojo Challenge MatchI think I've seen a few of these guys in action on ROH TV before, but I'm not overly familiar with them, though their pre-match sit-down interviews were helpful in getting to know a little bit about them. The match itself was fine. It was well-wrestled enough and the effort was there, but it was hard to care about a match with no real significance with guys who aren't established. It would be one thing if one or two guys stood out, but they honestly all blended together for me. That isn't to say they don't have potential, it's just that they won't gain a ton from working with each other on these televised shows. That said, this was probably the best episode of ROH TV to do something like this with given how star-studded the main event was.
Chase Parker def. Samir SinghWhy are Ever-Rise and The Bollywood Boyz still feuding? Ever-Rise have now beaten The Bollywood Boyz twice, including a tag team tornado match recently. That isn't to say this was bad, just unnecessary. The six-minute match was well-wrestled, but there was anything overly special about it. On the bright side, Parker picked up the win, so at least Ever-Rise are slowly building momentum as they continue to appear on both 205 Live and NXT.
Universal Champion Roman Reigns def. Kevin Owens in a Steel Cage MatchIt was incredibly smart for WWE to kick off the show with this match as SmackDown had an NFL lead-in this week. The Steel Cage stipulation made sense given how much Jey Uso interfered at TLC, even though Uso got involved a bunch here as well. That would be my only nitpick of this as it was an excellent piece of business otherwise. Owens is flourishing in the underdog role while Reigns continues to kill it. I figured this would be the end of the rivalry with Reigns winning, but Owens getting screwed over yet again means a third match is likely for the Royal Rumble pay-per-view, potentially with Uso either banned from ringside or being trapped inside of a shark cage.
Reckoning def. Nikki CrossI know I sound like a broken record at this point, but Mia Yim really deeds to ditch the dumb RETRIBUTION act. Mercedes Martinez was able to escape back to NXT, so why can't Yim? Of course, the biggest difference between her and Martinez is that she's doing all that she could do in NXT, but at least that'd be better than whatever the hell this Reckoning crap is. On the bright side, this was a quality contest between two of Raw's better women's wrestlers. Cross wasn't able to score much offense, but this was a significant improvement over her recent Main Event matches against Peyton Royce and Nikki Cross.
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