It's only fitting that Monday Night Rollins would kick off with Seth Rollins himself. He brags about what he, J&J Security and Kane did to Brock Lesnar last week. He thanks them by giving them Apple watches, giving Kane a Hawaiian vacation and J&J a new car. It was like the Price is Right. I enjoyed the douchey segment, mainly because J&J are spectacular. Nobody interrupted or anything, and it led to our awful opening contest between Big Show and Mark Henry. It's hard to think of a match I'd care less about. Henry is a face again for no real reason. Show wins with the WMD, before Ryback shows up to fight. This also leads into the next match, which pits Ryback against Miz. The continuity of these matches was fine but the crowd didn't care about this. Ryback even busted out a super delayed vertical suplex, and even that didn't wake up the crowd. Miz got tired of this and ran up the ramp to leave and counted out. My only major concern with this was that the countout ended at four. Like, that's just plain lazy work from the official.
The Bella Twins are out next with Alicia Fox, or Alicia Bella I guess. Alicia took on Paige and they worked through a commercial break which was fine. They had a good match. JBL pissed me off on commentary as he just straight up shit on Paige and made her sound like a terrible person. Like, just talk about she's untrustworthy, don't take it as far as you did. They did the whole "person gets thrown outside so we interrupt the match for a commercial" spot. It's such an irritating thing to me. Figure out your commercial breaks better. Paige wins by countering a rollup which was fine, but it doesn't advance the angle much. Why is Alicia with the Bellas? Is anything going to happen soon to change this status quo?
John Cena made his appearance next to bring back our beloved US Title Open Challenge. Surprisingly, Kevin Owens looks like he's going to answer it. They do the introductions and everything only for Owens to leave and bring out Cesaro for the challenge. Owens joined commentary and killed, putting over his July 4th match with Finn Balor and the Battleground match with Cena. The match was one of the better ones on Raw all year, right up there with Cena/Neville for the US Title a few months back. They did a great job in making fans care about Cesaro as they popped for near falls. It followed the "tons of kick outs" Cena formula, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. They even protected Cesaro and his performance as Owens came in to cause the disqualification. Hopefully, they don't forget about it like they did with Neville. Owens laid out both guys in one of the better segments/matches I can recall on Raw this year.
We get the typical Bray Wyatt promo on his feud with Roman Reigns. That moved us into an eight man tag pitting the Lucha Dragons and Prime Time Players against the New Day and Bo Dallas. They did this same match on Smackdown, but this was an extended version of it. What I don't understand is why Kofi Kingston ate the pin. Bo Dallas is a total jobber at this point and him being in there made him perfect pin bait. I know Kingston isn't going to win on the 4th of July against Brock Lesnar, but could he at least not look like a complete loser heading into the match? To begin the final hour, Dolph Ziggler and Lana are out to go "public". They discuss Rusev and how Lana and Dolph are officially dating. This brings out Rusev, who has gone from emo dude that's sad about Lana to bitter dude who has upgraded to Summer Rae. Summer ran down Lana for a while before slapping her. That leads to Lana attacking her and giving us a PG 13 version of those old ECW catfights. I needed some screeching from Joey Styles to help this. It's the first step towards Lana stepping into the ring but this whole Lana/Ziggler angle is absolutely pointless. Why is it happening? Who is it really helping? I miss Lana and Rusev together. At least made sense and was entertaining. This is kind of just there. Plus, I actually prefer Summer to Lana but a slight margin.
The guy that does the Red Arrow and has nothing more to his character, Neville, is out. He goes one on one with Sheamus in a decent but rather irrelevant match. It wasn't bad but it was just there. Sheamus won following a Brogue Kick. Up next, Jack Swagger, the ultimate jobber, was out to face another relative jobber, King Barrett. You know your career is in a bad spot when you are jobbing to Barrett. That dude almost never wins but he did so here. There was surprisingly no R-Truth interaction here which is odd given his program with Barrett.
Monday Night Rollins is bookended by the man himself. Our main event is one we've seen a trillion times as Reigns and Ambrose take on Kane and Rollins. It was no DQ so it at least had a slightly different flavor. That stipulation allowed for some kendo sticks and a Bray Wyatt appearance. He attacked Roman Reigns before Seth pinned Ambrose. Post match, the Authority beat down Reigns and Seth even buckle bombed him through a table. Bray Wyatt casually strolled out, which was so damn odd given his gimmick, and hit Reigns with Sister Abigail to close things. I feel like the Bray character means absolutely nothing anymore which is sad considering the potential it had. Overall, I think this Raw was a step up from recent weeks. There was some great (Cesaro/Cena), some good (the opening promo, Paige/Alicia and Seth looking strong), and the not so good (everything else). I say this gets an above average score. 6.5/10.
