WWE Raw 5 Takeaways: Alexa Bliss is the Star of the Show
In this latest episode of WWE Raw, Alexa Bliss staked her claim as the top superstar in the women’s division, and Bray Wyatt did his best to build momentum by laying waste to three big names.
Raw’s send-off show before Sunday’s pay-per-view Payback brought us some interesting moments, even if the show itself was mostly comprised of disjointed matches. It’s a bit disappointing to think that the Intercontinental Championship doesn’t actually have a match booked, meaning only the women’s and tag team titles will be defended, in addition to the inter-brand matches for the WWE Championship and United States Championship.
That said, Dean Ambrose and The Miz did get plenty of time to take their rivalry to another level, though this week’s segments between them were not as effective as The Miz’s work/shoot promo on Ambrose last week.
Here are five takeaways from this week’s Raw, including more thoughts on the current Intercontinental Champion’s rivalry.
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Credit: WWE.com
5. Alexa Bliss is the Best Thing About Raw Right Now
“Alexa Bliss is the greatest say, what?”
Ladies and gentleman, that was one of the best lines of 2017 thus far, and it’s an exhibition in cleverness from a superstar who is producing the best mic work in the company right now. Sure, nothing beats a good work/shoot Miz promo, but Alexa Bliss can turn literally anything into gold with her quick wit and ability to draw heat from a live crowd. We’ve seen her bail out bad promos in the build-up to the WWE SmackDown Women’s title match at WrestleMania 33, and she continues to stake her claim as being a superstar you have to see when she’s on TV.
Bliss is running circles around Bayley and Sasha Banks (more on that coming up) in promos, and she’s played the role of the conniving heel perfectly. She channeled her inner Tyler Breeze by scooping up the pinfall victory in the No. 1 contender’s match after Nia Jax did much of the work, and she backed out of her fight with Sasha before pretending to leave just to ambush Bayley.
I’m looking forward to Alexa winning the Raw Women’s Championship at Payback, giving us a new storyline for Bayley when “The Huggable One” loses in front of her family at San Jose.
If there’s another thing about Bliss that deserves praising, it’s her ability to make a championship feel like it’s worth something. Like The Miz, she knows when to duck out of a fight and when to defend her title, and I hope she’s able to re-establish the value of the Raw Women’s Championship by holding the title for a long time.