WWE Monday Night Raw Results: The Good And The Bad On September 14, 2020

This week’s edition of Monday Night Raw featured some good — and some bad — on the show.

Heading into tonight, we knew we’d get Drew McIntyre against Keith Lee, Mickie James versus Asuka for the Raw Women’s Title and Seth Rollins versus Dominik in a steel cage match.

Which parts were worth watching and what parts were worth skipping and missing out on?

WWE Raw Ratings—Last Five Weeks

• September 7, 2020—1.725 million viewers
• August 31, 2020—1.896 million viewers
• August 24, 2020—2.028 million viewers
• August 17, 2020—1.643 million viewers
• August 10, 2020—1.722 million viewers

The Good

Seth Rollins Beats Dominik, Continues To Torment Buddy Murphy

Rollins continued his feud with the Mysterio family in a one-on-one cage match with Dominik. Prior to the match, Rollins warned Buddy Murphy not to come out to the ring.

However, Murphy ended up interfering and nearly accidentally costing Rollins the match. He slammed the cage door into Rollins which led to Dominik attempting to climb out of the cage. Murphy did enough to prevent him from doing so and Rollins would eventually beat Dominik in the ring with a curb stomp.

If you were thinking Rollins and Murphy would be all buddy-buddy after the match, they weren’t. After playing nice with Murphy for a bit, he then proceeded to throw him into the barricade and steel cage.

At the end of it all, Mysterio’s daughter checked up on Murphy. In other words, we all know this is leading to an eventual babyface turn for Murphy — which is the next step in this feud.

This was just perfect heel Rollins. He was his classic obnoxious self and he continues to be the second best heel in the WWE today. The only reason he doesn’t receive more attention for it is due to Randy Orton’s presence on Raw.

Cedric Alexander Continues Heel Turn

Cedric Alexander made his official full heel turn when he turned on allies Ricochet and Apollo Crews during last week’s episode of Raw. Needless to say, it was one of the highlights of last week’s Raw — and it was once again one of the highlights of this edition of Raw.

Alexander is finally receiving a push after spending much of 2019 and 2020 toiling around in pointless cruiserweight and tag team matches. He pulled off a good promo here explaining why he turned on his buddies, citing that he was tired of being beat down by “The Hurt Business” and coming home to his family battered and bruised.

He was then interrupted by Ricochet and Crews before being challenged to a one-on-one match by the former. He then proceeded to defeat Ricochet after a Lumbar Check.

Since Bruce Pritchard took over Raw creative over the summer, the WWE has a re-found emphasis on stables. Alexander’s addition to “The Hurt Business” will only help the group and his own singles career as he moves away from the cruiserweight division.

The Bad

Zelina Vega Inserts Herself Into Feud With Asuka

The whole breakup of the Angel Garza, Andrade and Zelina Vega stable has been teased for several weeks now to the dysfunction between Garza and Andrade/Vega. Early on during Raw, Garza and Andrade were seen arguing backstage, with Garza complaining that he’s tired of being the scapegoat for the team’s struggles. They eventually fought, with Vega eventually walking off and saying she can’t do this anymore.

While the whole breakup of this stable is being advanced way too fast, it was even more odd to see Vega break away from the group by coming out and delivering a heel promo promptly after the Asuka-Mickie James Women’s Title match. She then proceeded to slap Asuka before running out of the ring.

Why was it so bad? Because whether intentional or not, the Asuka-James match mysteriously ended when James neither submitted nor was pinned, but because she couldn’t continue the match anymore.

Yes, in one really weird ending, the referee deemed that she couldn’t continue the match any longer during the Asuka lock in which nothing actually happened.

While this can easily prolong the Asuka-James feud moving forward into Clash of Champions, it was odd to see Vega — who has had about five total singles matches in her WWE career — be used as a rival for the Raw Women’s Champion shortly after a controversial finish. Simply put, it took away steam from the controversial finish.

We’ll see where this whole triangle feud is heading next week. But it’s puzzling to say the least.

Drew McIntyre Vs. Keith Lee Interrupted By Retribution

While there were a number of things worth watching on Raw, nothing was more intriguing than the ongoing storyline of Drew McIntyre versus Keith Lee in the main event.

The night began with Adam Pearce announcing that McIntyre would defend the WWE Title against Lee at Clash of Champions if Orton is too injured to wrestle AND Lee wins tonight’s main event.

That was an interesting enough subplot to tonight’s match. And the WWE actually built up to the match well as McIntyre and Lee went at it backstage when the WWE champion took offense to Lee slapping him in the back after some testy back-and-forth dialogue.

However, they threw it all down the toilet for Retribution to interfere and attack both McIntyre and Lee during the match. The ending saw The Hurt Business come out — they had negotiated a deal with Pearce earlier in the night to fend off Retribution — with both McIntyre and Lee banding together to do a double dive onto Retribution and The Hurt Business outside of the ring.

If the Retribution storyline was an interesting one that people wanted to see — a la the Nexus storyline from 2010 — then this would have been fine.

But to kill off an interesting subplot to the McIntyre/Orton/Lee feud by furthering the Retribution storyline was just simply bad television.