RAW stays stuck in neutral while the booking team checks their watches

Another Monday of spinning wheels in the mud

If you checked the backstage notes for this week's RAW, you probably felt that familiar sting of deja vu. We are in the middle of July with Summerslam looming, yet the creative direction feels like a rerun of a show that wasn't particularly good the first time around. Wrestling fans have a high tolerance for nonsense, but watching a three-hour broadcast that struggles to justify its own existence is a special kind of torture.

The lineup for July 13, 2026, is a collection of matches that feel like they were picked via a random number generator. We see talent who have been spinning their wheels since the spring being shuffled into segments that provide zero heat. When you have a roster this dense with athletic ability, watching them work through stagnant scripts is like watching a Ferrari sit in a school zone.

The obsession with the mid-card scramble

Let's talk about the reliance on these chaotic multi-man tags to fill time. It feels like the booking office decided that if they put six people in the ring at once, the audience won't notice the lack of a cohesive story arc. It is the wrestling equivalent of a frantic fever dream where everyone is hitting their finishers, but absolutely nothing is at stake.

Compare this to the golden eras of the mid-2000s or even the tighter mid-card pushes from a few years ago. Back then, a mid-card match served a purpose. It built a contender or pushed a character shift. Today, it feels like we are watching a group of performers punch a clock. The crowd in Dallas last night seemed to sense this, too, as the energy in the building was suspiciously flat for a show just weeks away from a major premium live event.

Where did the stakes go

The biggest issue here isn't the skill level of the performers; it is the complete lack of motivation presented in the scripts. We have title challengers who are losing non-title matches every other week. Why should I care about a championship clash at Summerslam if the person chasing the strap can't beat a lower-card heel on a throwaway Monday night? The math simply does not work.

When you dilute your own product by making wins and losses feel interchangeable, you stop having matches and start having exhibitions. An exhibition is fine for a house show in Topeka. On prime-time television, it is lazy. We saw glimpses of talent trying to elevate the material—a crisp snap suplex here, a well-timed high spot there—but you cannot athleticize your way out of a dead-end promo structure.

Missing the mark on momentum

The return of figures like Big Cass, while expected in the world of wrestling recycling, feels like a frantic reach for reaction. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug until you realize the dealer has been selling you the same batch for eight years. It's not that he shouldn't be back, but if the best we can do is rely on 2018 nostalgia while the current narrative remains frozen, we have a bigger problem.

The creative team has until the end of the month to fix the trajectory of these storylines before the audience checks out completely. Right now, the show is relying on the inertia of the brand name rather than the quality of the weekly output. If they keep prioritizing these cluttered matches over character growth, the ratings dive won't be a fluke—it will be a trend. At 3 hours long, RAW needs to be a destination, not a background noise.

I am not sure if anyone in that locker room knows what their character is actually fighting for anymore.

That quote, echoing through the halls of every forum, captures the current mood perfectly. The technical ability is there; the passion is there. The direction, however, remains buried under a pile of bland scripts that treat the audience like we have the memory span of a goldfish. Fix the motivation, tighten the writing, and stop treating the mid-card like a scrap heap. Otherwise, Summerslam is going to look a lot like this Monday night: a whole lot of action, and absolutely nothing to show for it.