Monday Night Raw Review - November 11, 2019

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

WWE Women's Tag Team Champions The Kabuki Warriors def. Raw Women's Champion Becky Lynch and Charlotte Flair

Flair and Natalya beat The Kabuki Warriors in non-title action last week, yet it was Lynch who got the title shot alongside Flair because... she wanted it? Seriously, they couldn't have shown Natalya getting attacked backstage beforehand by Asuka and Kairi Sane? That's just lazy storytelling. The match was well wrestled but felt like it lasted a lot longer than it needed to. Shayna Baszler brawling with Bayley (so much for that Brand Split, eh?) distracted Lynch and caused her to get pinned by Asuka, who teased going for the Raw Women's Championship a while ago. Maybe this was designed to plant the seeds for that after Survivor Series.

Drew McIntyre def. Sin Cara

Well, this was poor timing. Although this was taped Friday after SmackDown in Manchester, Sin Cara actually revealed on Monday morning via Twitter that he had requested his release from WWE. Time will tell whether it will be granted, but I would assume not considering Mike Kanellis is still waiting for his release to be granted as well. Cara scored some offense early on, but this ended up being a glorified squash for McIntyre, which is exactly what it should have been. It's imperative he maintains momentum now that he's back and this was a fine way of ensuring that.

The Singh Brothers vs. R-Truth in a 2-on-1 Handicap Match ended in a No Contest

We were told that this was a standard Handicap match where the 24/7 Championship was up for grabs. I guess Truth would have won the title regardless of who he pinned, but it didn't end up mattering because The Singh Brothers escaped to the back, where they were ambushed by Erick Rowan. Rowan cared so little about the title that he didn't even bother to pin either one of them (I honestly forget which of them is the champion at the moment). In short, this was a complete waste of time.

Seth Rollins def. WWE United Kingdom Champion WALTER by Disqualification (Non-Title); Rollins, Kevin Owens and The Street Profits def. Imperium

This might be the only time we ever see WALTER/Imperium on Raw due to WALTER's unwillingness to move to the United States, but at least he impressed in his Raw debut and had strong showings in both of his matches. Personally, I would have given Imperium the win, but the main roster guys had to win at some point. Rollins vs. WALTER was way too brief to be anything special, but the subsequent eight-man tag team match was fun. The crowd especially loved Owens, which should serve as a reminder to WWE to do more with him. He's been criminally wasted since being moved to Raw in the 2019 WWE Draft.

Andrade def. Cedric Alexander

These two had some awesome matches in NXT, but this wasn't given nearly enough time to be as great as it had the potential to be. Despite that, they maximized their minutes and produced an exciting little sprint. When only half of Alexander's entrance was televised, you had to know Andrade was winning. I'm a big fan of Alexander's, but it made more sense for Andrade to continue to recent roll he's been on. I just hope he's put in a real rivalry soon and doesn't flounder the same way he did on SmackDown.

Bobby Lashley Attacked Rusev

Lana's big "confession" was that she was pregnant with Rusev's child, even though she admitted at the end of the segment to the camera that she was lying (shocker, I know). I can't even begin to stress how terrible this segment was. Lana's promo was over the place and the crowd appropriately booed her for it. Meanwhile, Rusev is apparently one of the most popular babyfaces on the Raw roster because he's a documented sex addict. Scrap the storyline, WWE. This trash is going nowhere.

Erick Rowan def. Soner Durson

One week removed from his one-off on Main Event, Rowan returned to Raw to squash some local loser. The match was over in the matter of a minute, but the focus was entirely on the covered cage Rowan carried down to the ring with him. He was shown talking to it backstage earlier in the evening, so you'd think it'd be some kind of an animal. I don't want to get my hopes up, simply because the payoff to angles like this usually end up being disappointing.

Raw Tag Team Champions The Viking Raiders def. Mark Andrews and Flash Morgan Webster (Non-Title)

As I mentioned last week, it looks like Viking Raiders will remain in a holding pattern until after Survivor Series. Hopefully we'll see them feud with The O.C. eventually as had been teased following Crown Jewel. I hated how Viking Raiders faced random dudes with stupid gimmicks on the last two episodes of Raw, so at least they were given some credible competition this week in former NXT UK Tag Team Champions Andrews and Webster. They took the champs to the limit but ultimately fell short. If nothing else, I enjoyed it for what it was.

Humberto Carrillo, Randy Orton and Ricochet def. The O.C.

I fully expected Orton to turn on Ricochet at some point based how they've gone at it in recent weeks, but I'm glad they addressed that beforehand backstage to eliminate that as a possibility. It'd also be odd for them to turn on each other at this point with Ricochet and Orton representing Team Raw at Survivor Series in two weeks. They teased it down the stretch, but Orton ended up aiding his squad to victory and letting Carrillo pin Styles, which was cool to see. This was a pretty standard main event for the most part that successfully set the stage for Survivor Series's big Team Raw vs. Team SmackDown vs. Team NXT match.

Overall Show

Similar to what I said in my SmackDown review from Friday, you could tell this show was taped because of how fake some of the reactions sounded. There was some sold build for Survivor Series and the appearances from the NXT UK Superstars was a nice touch, but the episode largely felt phoned it. Nothing stood out as being must-see in the slightest and none of the matches were overly special. The three hours weren't a drag to sit through, but a lot of storylines are on ice at the moment due to the brand supremacy stuff. Raw and SmackDown have been a bit better lately thanks to NXT's involvement at Survivor Series, but I'm partially looking forward to things going back to normal after the event to see what WWE has in store for both brands.