Posted in: Sports, TV, WWE | Tagged: recaps, wrestling, wwe, WWE Raw

Riddle Returns, Lesnar Turns Heel, and More on Cursed WWE Raw

The post-mania bump, Cody Rhodes controversy, WWE sale, and Vince McMahon rumors led to incredible ratings but an abysmal WWE Raw. Watch highlights here.

More people tuned into WWE Raw last night than have in years, as the episode drew an average of .76 in the 18-49 demo and over 2.2 million viewers, with one hour hitting a .5 and topping 2.4 million viewers. The reason? Not just the usual Raw after WrestleMania boost, but a Raw following the extremely controversial decision of Roman Reigns retaining over Cody Rhodes in the main event, plus a Raw in the wake of UFC parent Endeavor buying WWE and merging it with UFC to form a new mega-sports-entertainment company, and to to top it all off, keeping Vince McMahon in charge as the Executive Chairman of the new company. All of that means that a recent record number of people tuned into watch the slow motion trainwreck of wrestlers and fans discovering in real time that Vince wasn't just running the top level business affairs of the company, but was literally backstage, directing the entire show, and changing everything to suit his whims.

If you were tuned into that very trainwreck, you might not even remember what actually happened during the show. If you didn't tune in, you're probably wondering what the hell everyone is talking about. Well, you can live or relive it via the WWE Raw Youtube highlights below.

Triple H opened WWE Raw with a speech promising that absolutely nothing was going to change, virtually guaranteeing that everything was going to change, pretty much immediately.

Paul Heyman challenged Cody to a tag team match against Roman and Solo Sikoa… if Rhodes could find a partner. Enter Brock Lesnar, who, during the main event, would turn on Cody and beat the crap out of him for ten minutes to close out the show.

Bad Bunny was in attendance at WWE Raw to watch Rey Mysterio face Austin Theory, and then to get in a scuffle with Judgment Day and end up chokeslammed through a table, setting up a tag match for Backlash. Bad Bunny is probably my favorite WWE wrestler.

Riddle made his return to beat up The Miz for the third night in a row on WWE Raw.

In a Vince special that the crowd openly hated, Omos beat Elias.

Raquel Rodriguez and Liv Morgan beat Damage CTRL in the only women's match on the card after Vince McMahon scrapped two planned Triple Threats, earning them a future shot at Becky Lynch and Lita.

Champions Bianca Belair and Rhea Ripley promised to have a match in the future as well.

New tag champs Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn did have a match on Raw, against the Street Profits.

Bobby Lashley squashed Mustafa Ali.

And Seth Rollins… did whatever this was.

The big question on everyone's mind is: will WWE Raw continue to be this bad with Vince back? There's some wishful thinking that maybe he was only doing this because he happened to be in LA for WrestleMania and he won't be at Smackdown and Raw going forward. We won't have to wait long to find out, but we'd advise you not get your hopes up. This is probably going to be what WWE is for the foreseeable future. Vince McMahon won a great victory, dodging his latest scandal and selling the company to someone willing to keep him in power for the long term, and after a McMahon victory comes the very long McMahon victory lap. The last time McMahon won this big was when he bought WCW, and we all suffered through two decades of misery after that. So the next few months should be interesting, to say the least.

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