3 things that went wrong on the July 18 episode of WWE Raw

This week’s episode of WWE Raw, which emanated from the Amalie Arena in Tampa, Fla., tried its best to make you regret every second you didn’t spend watching the 2022 Home Run Derby or anything else.

To be fair, the show featured some decent angles and some quality in-ring action, but as we’ve seen with WWE plenty of times over the years, the company can’t get out of its own way creatively, and that’s without mentioning the shameless bit of reputation laundering it attempted at the start of the show.

These are three things that went wrong on the July 18 episode of WWE Raw.

The opening segment

As nice as it was to see Titus O’Neil, nearly everyone saw Raw’s opening segment for the propaganda it was. My fellow editor Raphael Garcia already pinpointed the many problems with this speech WWE had O’Neil give to start the episode, and you can click here if you want to read those critiques in full.

In short, the company grossly weaponized O’Neil’s philanthropy and legitimate desire to use his platform for good to obscure the recent allegations of sexual misconduct and the hush money payments to silence the victims. Between the comments about how WWE is an apolitical “safe haven” for everyone (it’s not apolitical) and the familiar “we’re here to put smiles on people’s faces” refrain, this felt like one of those “Stand Up for WWE” videos from 2009-2010.

O’Neil probably means well, and he’ll surely use his global ambassador role to continue more of his admirable work, but WWE knows what it’s doing putting him out there as a public face of a company mired in controversy.

Angelo Dawkins vs. Omos ends in a DQ, setting up The Street Profits vs. MVP and Omos…which also ends in a DQ

At least Omos didn’t pin one of the Street Profits again this week, but what we got instead was far less satisfying. The seven-footer faced Angelo Dawkins as a follow-up to last week’s six-man tag team match, but the encounter only lasted a minute before the referee caught Montel Vontavious Porter tripping Dawkins to trigger the disqualification.

Once Adam Pearce did his best Teddy Long impression and booked a tag team match between the Street Profits, MVP, and Omos, having one of the Profits pin MVP seemed like the obvious decision, right?

Apparently, no one in WWE felt the same, as the tag match ALSO ended with a disqualification after Jey Uso pushed Montez Ford off the top rope. It’s another in a long line of recent finishes designed to get you excited about Jeff Jarrett serving as guest referee for the tag title match at SummerSlam, but it’s doing nothing to get fans excited about seeing the Profits and the Usos wrestle for those titles.

24/7 Championship nonsense

By this point, we know that the 24/7 Championship exists to get lower midcarders on television through harmless comedy, but WWE doesn’t have any new ideas for this belt, as we saw during the six-woman tag team match that pitted 24/7 Champion Dana Brooke, Alexa Bliss, and Asuka against Tamina, Doudrop, and Nikki A.S.H.

Not long after the opening bell, Reggie appeared at ringside, and that set off the usual chain of schoolboy rollups that we usually see during these 24/7 Title segments. If the angle ended with someone else winning the belt, then WWE would’ve at least gotten some credit for doing something different with the belt. Unfortunately, it booked all those title changes to end up in the same place it started: with Dana Brooke as the champion.

If that’s not a perfect metaphor for WWE’s frustrating status quo, then I don’t know what is. At least Asuka got the submission win for her team once the tag match resumed.