Raw featured a lot of longer matches, and that’s a good thing

Watching this past Monday’s episode of WWE Raw, it was almost as though the people who put the show together thought “Well, we have this roster full of great wrestlers. Why don’t we let them go out there and do what they do best?”.

That’s right, it took Vince McMahon and his troupe of writers and yes-men this long to realize that the best way to fill the three-hour runtime of his weekly pro wrestling show is with, you guessed it, pro wrestling matches.

With Drew McIntyre vs. Kofi Kingston, Charlotte Flair vs. Asuka, Shelton Benjamin vs. Cedric Alexander, Riddle vs. Xavier Woods and Shayna Baszler & Nia Jax vs. Natalya & Tamina all extending beyond at least one commercial break, Raw felt like an easier watch than it does most weeks.

The number of long matches on last night’s Raw gave WWE less time to add in its usual allotment of nonsense.

To be clear, Monday’s Raw still featured the same flaws that aggrivate even the most loyal viewer. Raw Women’s Champion Rhea Ripley — whose characterization is still as muddy as it was when she debuted on the brand — faced Nikki Cross in a Beat the Clock match where Ripley apparently forgot she was in a Beat the Clock match.

Jaxson Ryker inexplicably pinned A.J. Styles as part of WWE’s usual “have champions lose non-title matches” strategy. And the show still started with with a long talking segment involving MVP and Bobby Lashley — one that was almost identical to last week’s opening segment.

Even the lengthy matches had their problems. Asuka vs. Flair was a lazily booked rematch designed to give Flair her win back. Kingston vs. McIntyre concluded with a lazy non-finish in order to schedule the same match for next week’s Raw. Benjamin vs. Alexander was great, but the audience had to sit through Alexander yelling his way through a promo where he recapped his feud with Benjamin (right after a video recapping the feud aired, no less) before the match started. And while the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship match took up a lot of time, it was another one of those matches where fans waited for the silly finish to play out.

But despite the many issues, the quality of the wrestling and the time dedicated to it made stomaching the shortcomings less of an arduous task.

Unfortunately, WWE will probably revert back to scripting (more) lazy plot devices on next week’s show, but at least for one night, the company more or less allowed the wrestlers carry the storytelling in the ring, and it was more effective than anything that could be recited off of a script.