Monday Night Raw Review - July 11, 2022

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

Brock Lesnar Was Interrupted by Paul Heyman and Theory Before Attacking Alpha Academy

This marked Lesnar's first promo since the go-home edition of Raw before WrestleMania 38 back in March. He didn't say anything too eventful during his promo, but I continue to enjoy this version of him and the crowd ate it up. He and Heyman had a fun exchange, Theory recalled Lesnar nearly crippling him with an F5 off the Elimination Chamber pod back in February, and Alpha Academy sold that beating from Lesnar like champs. This was a strong start to the show.

Finn Balor def. Rey Mysterio

They killed some time beforehand with The Judgement Day (or what's left of it) attempting to offer Dominik Mysterio a spot in the group, which Dominik once again declined. Balor vs. Mysterio was entertaining while it lasted, though I wish it meant more with it being a first-time-ever encounter. Balor winning this was imperative given how cold Judgement Day has been lately, but it's going to take more than that for them to get back on track.

Carmella def. Raw Women's Champion Bianca Belair by Count-Out

This is a rematch I didn't need to see but knew was inevitable after their feud continued coming out of Money in the Bank. Unfortunately, it looks like we'll be getting yet another rematch from them based on the count-out finish that happened here. I believe Carmella scored more offense here than she did at the pay-per-view and it was a quality contest all things considered, but Carmella simply isn't a compelling challenger in my eyes. I know Belair vs. Becky Lynch at SummerSlam would be a rematch as well, but at least they haven't gone one-on-one since WrestleMania 38 (not to mention SummerSlam is where their feud first started a year ago), so I'm fine with that.

AJ Styles and Ezekiel Interrupted The Miz and Ciampa on Miz TV; Styles and Ezekiel def. Miz and Ciampa by Disqualification

The person that this entire segment centered around wasn't even there, that being Logan Paul. Rather, he'll be on Raw next week. I don't hate the idea of an alliance between Miz and Ciampa (if only because it gets Ciampa on Raw in a regular role), but I'm not sensing any immediate chemistry quite yet. Miz TV played out predictably that led to a tag team match that also played out predicably with a lame disqualification finish. In short, this was a waste of time.

Alexa Bliss and Asuka def. Nikki A.S.H. and Doudrop

From a storyline standpoint, why would Bliss and Asuka have any reason to team up? They've never had an alliance and don't have any established issues with either Nikki or Doudrop. It was basically an excuse to get Bliss and Asuka on the show. I don't want them missing any more television time after being gone for so long prior to their returns in the spring, but I genuinely don't know where you go with either of them from here. It was a decent tag team affair that served no purpose.

Omos and Undisputed WWE Tag Team Champions The Usos def. R-Truth and The Street Profits

Angelo Dawkins and Jimmy Uso were scheduled to go one-on-one, but R-Truth and Omos got involved in the segment that preceded the match, so it turned into a six-man tag team matchup instead. I'm tired of seeing the Street Profits vs. Usos in singles action, but I don't think this was much better because Omos and Truth were randomly thrown in there. It was solid stuff, but Omos pinning Dawkins when Truth was right there was highly questionable.

United States Champion Bobby Lashley and Riddle def. Theory and Seth "Freakin" Rollins

Remember when Lashley was beating the hell out of Riddle on an almost weekly basis? I wish that was acknowledged, along with Theory's history with Riddle as his pupil (unless it was and I missed it). Nonetheless, this was an entertaining main event. Dolph Ziggler showing up halfway through and costing Theory the victory was random and it's impossible to care about Ziggler at this point after all the years of bad booking he's endured, but we'll see where it goes. It is odd he'd be feuding with Theory while Theory continues to feud with Lashley over the United States Championship. It was funny when Corey Graves made a big deal over Ziggler returning when in reality he was on Raw as recently as two weeks ago in the show-opening Battle Royal.

Overall Show

As you could probably tell, there wasn't a ton to this show, probably because they wanted to kill as much television time as possible. That's a bad sign heading into what is supposed to be one of their biggest pay-per-views of the year. Multiple matches were advertised in advance and both of them were scrapped earlier in the day. In other words, it was your typical Monday. There was simply no sense of urgency or importance to almost anything on this episode outside Lesnar's appearance at the beginning. It felt like a phoned in effort and there was no excuse of it being a holiday this week. Rather, several storylines are treading water and if they're progressing, they're not very interesting. I appreciated that there wasn't a lot of filler, but nothing was newsworthy and the show moved by at a snail's pace as a result.

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