Welcome to Wrestling Inc.’s weekly review of “WWE Raw,” the first of two June 30 tapings (the other being Friday’s “WWE SmackDown”) that saw WWE, on the heels of Night of Champions, continue building toward “Saturday Night’s Main Event,” Evolution 2, and SummerSlam, all at the same time. What could go wrong?

Unsurprisingly, it was an action-packed episode full of match announcements like IYO SKY vs. Rhea Ripley and Seth Rollins vs. LA Knight, as well as matches that will likely lead to more match announcements like Lyra Valykria vs. Bayley. We’ll touch on all those things in the column, but interestingly, the WINC staff was particularly drawn to tag team stuff this week, from The New Day unexpectedly dropping the World Team Team Championship to Roxanne Perez being awarded her first main roster gold to the chaotic main event. If you’re upset because we don’t cover the entire show, feel free to take it up with our “Raw” results page; this column is for our opinions, which means it’s time for three things we hated and three things we loved about the 6/30/25 episode of “WWE Raw.”

“Hate” is honestly a strong word for what I was feeling at the end of the men’s tag title match, because what I was really feeling was profound confusion. I’m calling it a hate, though, because I don’t like being confused while watching wrestling (though you would think I’d have gotten used to it by now).

I just really, truly do not understand what I saw during this match. I’m not even saying it was a bad match! It may have been a great match! I don’t know — I just know what I thought this match was going in, as opposed to what I saw in the ring. I thought this was a heel vs. heel match with almost no build and very little heat behind it in which The New Day were destined to retain the tag titles, because they’ve basically done nothing with them so what was the entire point of their reign if they lost them here? What I saw was a match in which a Pittsburgh crowd that would later sit on their hands while Bayley and Lyra Valkyria put on a grappling clinic went absolutely BONKERS for an inexplicably babyface Judgment Day team — particularly Finn Balor. And it wasn’t just the crowd; unless something changed on the fly, the match was booked and produced as though Judgment Day were babyfaces, and Balor was made to look particularly strong, kicking out of the Midnight Hour, then kicking out of a shot from the tag belt, then getting the win. It was a WrestleMania match to blow-off a year-long feud where the conquering heroes finally claim the tag titles, only it happened on a random “Raw,” there was no feud, and the conquering heroes are dastardly heels who are actively in process of betraying at least one person who trusts them. Uh … sure?

And that’s not even getting into the actual booking of the title change. Again, I’m not MAD exactly, it’s just … who asked for this? What was the process of this decision coming about? It would be really nice if “WWE Unreal” was legit (it’s not) because I really need to understand how this sequence of events takes place for The New Day:

1. Turn heel in December in universally acclaimed angle
2. Five TV tag matches in four months (three TV singles), barely used
3. Win tag titles at WrestleMania in April
4. One match of any kind in two months, somehow used even less
5. Lose the tag titles on random “Raw” in June

The only conclusion to be drawn from that sequence of events — the only one — is that the people in WWE creative don’t know what the f*** they’re doing. But if you watched New Day vs. Judgment Day Monday night, you already knew that.

Written by Miles Schneiderman

We’re thirteen days from WWE Evolution 2″and the card is finally starting to fill out. Prior to “Raw,” just one match had been announced. By the end of the show, three more had been announced.

The show opened with Rhea Ripley announcing she’d moved on from Liv Morgan and Raquel Rodriguez. She wondered what was waiting for her at the all women’s show when IYO SKY came to the ring. The Women’s World champion said she wants to face the best and Ripley is the person. Ripley wants the title back and agreed to the match before reminding SKY that whatever happens, she asked for it. These two were part of the triple threat match at WrestleMania, which was the best match of the two nights. I’m glad to see them battle one-on-one. 

Following Finn Balor’s suggestion that Roxanne Perez replace Liv Morgan as one half of the women’s tag team champions, she and Raquel Rodriguez were announced for a match on Evolution 2. They will be defending their titles against a team from “Raw,” “SmackDown,” and “NXT”. While I’m glad the tag titles are being defended, this announcement should’ve been made to the women themselves, not to the men in their faction.

A little later in the show, a video aired of Adam Pearce and Nick Aldis. After putting over the women’s division, Pearce said they wanted to honor the first Evolution with a battle royal. It’s unclear how many women will actually be in the match as Aldis said, “many women will enter at Evolution, but only one will be left standing.” The winner of the battle royal will get a match at Clash in Paris on August 31. The winner of the original battle royal was the former Ember Moon now known as “Forever” ROH Women’s Champion Athena.

While three matches were officially announced, a fourth one should have been. Bayley faced Lyra Valkyria for the Number One contendership for the Women’s Intercontinental Championship. Since their match ended in a draw, a triple threat match should be added to Evolution 2. This show still has counterbooking vibes all over it, but at least we’re getting multiple title defenses. The first show had two, along with the finale of the Mae Young Classic, featuring SKY (then known as Io Shirai). With the announcement of the battle royal, women’s wrestlers of the past will likely be involved. There may also be a tag match involving the Bellas. Hopefully the show will have a nice balance of women who paved the way, the current stars, and women of the future. 

Written by Samantha Schipman

It was pretty inevitable that Roxanne Perez was going to become one half of the WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions alongside Raquel Rodriguez due to Liv Morgan’s super unfortunate injury, but the way it was announced tonight left so much to be desired. “Raw” General Manager Adam Pearce and “SmackDown” General Manager Nick Aldis were both on the show tonight, due to the double taping, and were making decisions and announcements all throughout the show. Following Finn Balor and JD McDonagh’s tag team title win, however, when the new champions were talking to the GMs backstage, they took it upon themselves to name Perez as champion… All while Rodriguez and Perez had yet to be seen on the show. 

The GMs just kind of let Balor know what was going on, and did one better without the women’s champs present. They also made the Evolution match where Rodriguez and Perez will be defending their gold against teams from “Raw,” “SmackDown,” and “NXT” official, without even telling them to their faces that Perez was in.

I thought maybe both ladies had the night off due to their travel to and from Saudi Arabia over the weekend, which would have made a lot of sense as to why it was Balor who was clued in to everything, but they were backstage in the Judgment Day’s clubhouse where Perez was seen putting the title around her waist shortly after everything was announced. I also wasn’t a huge fan of how Rodriguez seemed hesitant on teaming with Perez, when just last week on “Raw” she seemed super thankful that the former NXT Women’s Champion helped her during the segment where she put Ripley through the table. She wasn’t upset when Perez interfered at Night of Champions, either, though she actually didn’t end up doing too much before Ripley stuffed her in a trash can. Balor also reminded Rodriguez that she would be able to keep her title now and not have to relinquish the gold since she has a partner, but that didn’t exactly seem to sink through to her immediately, when I guess I just assumed it would have.

I’m sure now that this is all official and sorted out, that everything will be fine. It will also be pretty interesting and will make for a great story when Morgan comes back – especially since Dominik Mysterio voted “yes” on letting Perez in the Judgment Day without consulting her first. It was just the announcement tonight, with WWE not even bothering to have either woman in the shot, that just irked me. WWE has already shown us they don’t exactly care about the Women’s Tag Team Championships, and that was just one hell of a way to prove it once again.

Written by Daisy Ruth

Roxanne Perez was all but formalized as Women’s Tag Team Champion during “Raw” as the Judgment Day voted on whether she should become a member of the group, with Finn Balor reasoning to Raquel Rodriguez that she should let Perez continue as her partner while Liv Morgan is out injured. It was an obvious decision from the moment Morgan was sidelined, and while nothing can be taken for granted with WWE, at least it can be said that they are making it for now. 

Sure, it would have been great to see the moment come with Perez as the replacement in a match, but that time will surely come and there’s more than a few avenues to explore with her stand-in title reign. One only has to look at the current run of Naomi to understand the type of launching pad that replacement champions can have. It’s not like they can run the exact same play as Naomi and Jade Cargill, seeing as Morgan was not injured as part of a storyline, but there are little sparks of opportunity between the very overt manipulation of Balor, with JD McDonagh simply following his lead, and the pair of Rodriguez and Dominik Mysterio – currently caught between a rock and a Liv Morgan. 

Rodriguez and Mysterio are very clearly on the side of not stirring up dissent, while Balor has clearly eyed Perez up as a member of the faction for the past few weeks, and while I am not a fan of this vein there is also a brewing love triangle between Mysterio, Perez, and Morgan. If history has shown anything, at the very least that sort of angle can yield a run with the WWE Women’s World title – albeit you would hope for a better reasoning. At the very least, Perez is now the second of three top-tier women’s wrestlers to be called up and now hold a title, and it’s always worth celebrating a good graduation story.

Written by Max Everett

Monday’s show was certainly not the first time that WWE already set up a potential challenger that’s waiting on the other side of a title defense for a champion during the promo segment involving World Heavyweight Champion GUNTHER and Seth Rollins. In this particular case, however, it just felt so unnecessary to do. Given that Rollins is currently holding the Men’s Money In The Bank briefcase and can cash it in at any time without warning, there was absolutely zero point in having him get into a verbal confrontation with GUNTHER. Moreover, Rollins’ ongoing issues with Punk had nothing to do with GUNTHER at all which made that portion of the segment feel nonsensical, and LA Knight’s presence was completely baffling in the whole ordeal. Rollins and Knight have only had a couple interactions at most on WWE programming over the past few weeks, so adding a match between them at Saturday Night’s Main Event felt completely random. Commentary playing it off as though Rollins and Knight had been feuding for as long as Rollins and Punk have been only made everything feel even more hokey than it already was, and just didn’t feel like the right tone.

At the end of the day, this promo segment would’ve been much more enjoyable if it had simply been relegated to GUNTHER sending a message to Goldberg ahead of their Saturday Night’s Main Event World Heavyweight Championship match. It also would’ve served as an effective in building up some sort of storyline between GUNTHER and Goldberg with the short period between now and July 12, as well as Goldberg’s extremely limited schedule.

Written by Olivia Quinlan

As soon as Sami Zayn and Penta’s tag team match against The Vision’s Bron Breakker and Bronson Reed was announced in the aftermath of Night of Champions, I figured there was no way for this main event to end in anything other than a disqualification. WWE loves building factions through disqualification or no contest finishes: you have a member or two of a faction run a match, then the rest of that faction rushes the ring to cause some shenanigans in order to get the match thrown out before utter chaos ensues to close out the show. This isn’t exclusive to WWE, but it’s a lot more noticeable in WWE *solely* because of its overuse. As the match continued, I figured that interference was to come sooner rather than later, and that it was only a matter of time before we were robbed of a satisfying match ending yet again.

One, two, three. Wait, did Bron Breakker just get a clean pin?

“WWE Raw’s” main event ended in utter chaos, but not in the way you may expect. There was no sudden appearance from Seth Rollins here, no Paul Heyman interference to muddy the results of the match. After being tagged in by teammate Bronson Reed, Breakker stormed the ring with a spear after a series of frustrating near falls from the resilient Zayn, chugging along like a steam-powered locomotive before scoring a clean pinfall. Clean pinfalls are so hard to come by nowadays, but I’m not rejoicing solely for the sake of rarity. No, The Vision sorely needed this win, and they needed it to be clean and decisive.

This is how you build up a faction — not by ostentatious or flamboyant disqualification “all chaos has broken loose” nonsense. A faction built on nothing but outside interference becomes clownish, and is failed to be taken seriously. Do you know what a faction built on results becomes? They become a veritable threat — *grounded* in legitimacy. It wasn’t even that this finish was any less intense than a disqualification finish might be; Breakker’s spear looked absolutely devastating as he cut through air to break Zayn in half. This was a great match that was made even better by a *good* finish. By expressing restraint in the chaos, Breakker and Reed were booked to be real threats (and threats that exist outside of Rollins).

Adding Jey Uso in there was nice, especially since CM Punk was featured in an earlier segment. Uso, who is becoming more confident in singles competition by the day, got a credibility boost during the post-match save when he laid old-fashioned steel onto both Breakker and Reed in order to save Zayn and Penta. You can clearly see the WarGames team lines being drawn, and while I think November is a bit ways away, I guess it is never too early to start planning.

Sometimes I leave “Raw” feeling frustrated or confused — this was not the case. Sometimes, you just need a bit of control in the chaos.

Written by Angeline Phu