Monday Night Raw Review - August 5, 2024

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

World Heavyweight Champion Gunther Accepted Randy Orton's Challenge at Bash in Berlin

The World Heavyweight Championship just looks right over Gunther's shoulder. It's right where it belongs. His championship celebration was what you'd expect, but Orton coming out was a pleasant surprise. I love how he brought up that Gunther's win over him in the King of the Ring finals back in May was tainted due to his shoulder being up, so now they're going back to it with the title on the line at Bash in Berlin. I'm really looking forward to that rematch and the setup was simple.

Sheamus def. Ludwig Kaiser

It got lost in the shuffle of everything that happened, but I was happy to see Kaiser back at SummerSlam doing the ring introduction for Gunther. He was sidelined with a rib injury two months ago and he picked up where he left off in his feud with Sheamus. This was another enjoyable, hard-hitting affair from them. Pete Dunne's efforts to cost Sheamus the win were unsuccessful, so they're clearly headed for a clash of their own soon.

World Tag Team Champion Finn Balor Interrupted Damian Priest

Priest received a pretty loud babyface reaction when he made his entrance. WWE has done an effective job of getting him over as a babyface in the last month and I hope he can sustain he momentum. Losing the World Heavyweight Championship and moving into this feud with The Judgment Day might actually help him. Balor explained by his actions by saying that Priest cost him the World Heavyweight title a year ago at SummerSlam and he wanted to return the favor. That's a very logical explanation except for the fact it took him this long to exact his revenge. This segment also nicely set up Priest vs. JD McDonagh for later on.

Lyra Valkyria def. Shayna Baszler by Disqualification

Both of these women are skilled in the ring, so there was no question that they'd have a quality contest. Unfortunately, it was less than three minutes long due to Sonya Deville's group getting involved. Damage CTRL came out afterward to brawl with the heels, so it looks like they will be babyfaces going forward after all. They kept it brief before SKY took on Deville later on.

CM Punk Chased After Drew McIntyre; Bronson Reed Attacked Seth "Freakin" Rollins

Punk and Rollins had an excellent exchange and successfully planted the seeds for a future match between them. With Punk chasing after McIntyre through the crowd, it looks like WWE will be holding off on that for a little longer, as they should. Punk should wrap up his rivalry with McIntyre first, so maybe they'll be able to wait until WrestleMania 41 after all. The best part of the segment came when Reed laid out Rollins with several Tsunami splashes, which the crowd absolutely ate up. It's the most over he's ever been on the main roster and I hope WWE can capitalize on it.

The New Day (Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods) def. Authors of Pain

This wasn't any different than any other outing these teams have had over the course of this rivalry, but it was decent while it lasted. Needless to say, Odyssey Jones finally making his Raw debut during it was the highlight. He was actually drafted to the Raw brand back in the spring of 2023 and I have no idea why it took this long for him to make an appearance. He came off really well with the way he disposed of The Final Testament and the crowd was behind him, so this was an encouraging start for him.

A-Town Down Under def. Awesome Truth

I was okay with Orton (a SmackDown Superstar) showing up in the opening segment given the logic behind his Bash in Berlin match with Gunther, but A-Town Down Under really shouldn't be on Raw if we're supposed to take the Brand Split seriously. Then again, the Brand Split hasn't been strictly enforced in ages, so oh well. The match was fine, but it seemed to exist to tease tension between The Miz and R-Truth at the end.

Damian Priest def. World Tag Team Champion JD McDonagh by Disqualification

Yes, it was virtually impossible to see McDonagh as any sort of threat to Priest given the way he's been booked on the main roster, but that was never the intent. I was surprised it was as competitive as it was, but they had a good match that the crowd was hot for because of how over Priest is at the moment. The post-match angle with Rhea Ripley coming to Priest's aid against Judgment Day was even hotter. All of this played out exceptionally well.

IYO SKY def. Sonya Deville

Deville was originally scheduled to take on Dakota Kai, but Deville, Baszler and Zoey Stark attacked Kai backstage beforehand, so Sky filled in for Kai. I hope Kai isn't seriously hurt because she just came back from a long layoff earlier this year. This was a solid match, but as I've mentioned before, it's difficult to care about the "faction supremacy" between Damage CTRL and Deville's stable when nothing is at stake and they're exchanging wins simply for the sake of doing so.

The Wyatt Sicks (Erick Rowan, Joe Gacy and Dexter Lumis def. American Made (Chad Gable and The Creed Brothers)

American Made is the new name for Gable's faction. It was even established earlier in the episode that Otis, Akira Tozawa and Maxxine Dupri can keep the Alpha Academy name. As for the match, this was the perfect in-ring debut for The Wyatt Sicks, and I love the attention to detail with it happening in the same building as The Wyatt Family's main roster debut back in 2013. The matchup wasn't a barn burner by any means, but it had the perfect layout and the crowd was invested. I appreciated how they treated this like a big deal by doing it in the main event slot.

Overall Show

You can add this to the list of hot post-pay-per-view shows WWE has delivered this year. It felt like there was a lot happening throughout the three hours and I was never bored. Reed and Jones in particular had big nights, the main event was entertaining, a marquee match was announced for Bash in Berlin, several storylines were furthered and there was fallout from SummerSlam in addition to some fun wrestling. WWE desperately needed to hit the reset button coming out of SummerSlam and this edition of Raw accomplished that.

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