Monday Night Raw was broadcast live on Netflix last night from Tampa, Florida.  It was the 32nd time Raw resided from Tampa, Florida.  During Covid, the Yeungling Center was the home of Raw for a while after they had to leave Tropicana Field for the start of the MLB season that year. Fans dubbed it the ThunderDome. Tampa has treated WWE very well over the years, so it makes sense that they would keep coming back there. Raw was one of three events that the Yuengling Center hosted this Memorial Day Weekend.  Saturday Night’s Main Event and NXT Battleground were the other two. Raw is the crown jewel of WWE, and it didn’t let fans down this week. There were some big matches, and some stories progressed further along.

The first matches were a pair of dark arches for  WWE Main Event. The first match was Natalya with (Maxine Dupre) in her corner vs. Roxanne Perez :The winner was .Perez. The second was a tag team match between Austin Theory & Grayson Waller vs. New Catch Republic Pete Dunne & Tyler Bate :The winners were New Catch Republic. These matches are used to get the crowd into a good mood. 

Raw always has an opening to get the show off and running and the opening was a good one as Seth,”Freakin”  Rawlins came out with Paul Heyman, Bton Breaker & Big Bronson Reed, after his return on Saturday at Saturday Night’s Main Event.  It was a surprise for him to join this group after a previous feud with Rawlins. The quartet set up the ending of the show, which was going to be a Money in the Bank Triple threat qualifying match. This opening got fans in the show, and I, for one,  couldn, t wait for the final match. There were going to be a lot of implications regarding the rest of the show. 

The first match of the show was the other Money in the Bank triple threat qualifying match where  Penta, went up against Chad Gable, and Dragon Lee:  This match had luchadore written all over it as two of the combatants are considered luchadores and one has been playing as being a luchadore fore months now. El Grande Americano is the alter ego of Chad Gable. With the help of some outside interference, the winner ended up being  Penta.  This storyline isn’t over between these three fine luchadores if you will.

The second match of the evening was between Rusef and. Tazowa. Rusef has been feuding with The Alpha Academy for a few weeks since his return, and this match is the culmination of that feud. Rusef won pretty handily, and a new feud was set up between him and Sheamus “The Celtic Warrior”. after Sheamus came out to confront Rusef.

The next match was the third. It was a  Tag Team Triple Threat Match between The New Day, who are the current tag team champions, the War Raiders, the previous champions, and American Made, the Creed Brothers. This was a pretty good match with a lot of close finishes, but after some confusion and a mix up  The New Day ended up coming out on top in the end and retaining their Raw Tag Team Championships. 

Match four was set up during the course of the nights events as the returning : Liv Morgan faced off against Kairi Sane, who returned of a layoff last week on Raw. Roxanne Perez came out to help Liv but ended up costing her the match as there was confusion on why she was there in the first place. Perez and Rachel Rodriguez got into it on the outside, and Sane took advantage of the confusion and won the match in an upset by most people’s standards.

The last match of the night was the aforementioned  Money in the Bank Qualifier triple threat qualifier between Seth “Freekin” Rawlins, Sami Zayne & Finn Balor. There were a lot of implications in this match going forward into future episodes of Raw and premium live events down the line. The action was hot and heavy with all the competitors doing a great job. There were any close finishes. In the end, the interference from Breakerker, Reed, and Dominik Mysterio proved to be more than enough for Rawlins’ prediction at the top of the show to come true. He found a way amidst all the confusion to do his patented move, the curb stomp on Balor to win the match and qualify for the Money in the Bank PLE in Los Angeles in a couple of weeks. This was the match of the night, but it wasn’t everything that happened on the show.

Recapping a few of the other events. There were a couple of guests who appeared. Bert Krieser & Tom Sugura, two stand-up comedians, were there to promote their shows on Netflix. And as always, Kreischer couldn’t help acting the fool. Jey Uso had a spot but was confronted by Gunther, who came out and interrupted him. He wanted another match in a couple of weeks on Raw. This storyline continues to go on even if fans are sick of it. The third side story that happened outside the normal order of business was between Lyra Valkiria and Becky Lynch. They set up another match for Money in the Bank where if Lynch loses, she can’t fight Valkiria again. This has screwjob written all over it, unfortunately.  

As a whole, this was a pretty exciting episode of Monday Night Raw.  This was the first time I’ve seen this show live, so it was a special moment for me. Being there live made a big difference in how I think about these shows now. I had a good time, and I can’t wait to go back again if the show comes to Orlando or Jacksonville in the near future.

Dan Skip Allen