The biggest winners and losers from last night's Raw (July 2)
Another pedestrian showing from the red brand kicked off the month of July, showing that the company still hasn't gotten out of its lazy mode booking. When you were watching the show, did you ask yourself whether it made your more or less excited for Extreme Rules? Like many of you, my answer is "no."
2018 is fast on track to be one of the worst years, creatively, in WWE history. This is more than just a hit or miss thing at this point. It's an institutional problem.
Aside from a few important segments and a reappearance that might bode well for the tag team division, everything on the show was decidedly must-miss, and no one really shined like a star on Monday.
Did anyone manage to look OK heading into Extreme Rules?
Loser: Matt Hardy
The tired WWE formula of putting on singles matches ahead of a tag team contest continued from last week. Undoubtedly, Bray Wyatt would have been in Matt Hardy's place, but a car accident injury intervened.
Which meant that Matt Hardy lost twice in two weeks, this time to Curtis Axel.
Again, when will WWE finally realize that having jobbers beat people higher on the card doesn't make them look better, it only makes the people higher on the card look worse? No one believes that Bo Dallas and Curtis Axel, who have been booked like jobbers their entire careers and are a middling comedy act now, are threats to win the tag team titles.
Instead, this was just the lazy 50/50 formula that will no doubt see the Deleters of Worlds victorious at Extreme Rules.
Who cares?
Oh well, it could be worse. They could actually put the titles on them and give them the Carmella treatment. Thankfully, that's unlikely.