Possibly, and if it were under the McMahon regime I'd say you're absolutely correct. But I don't know if going on precedent is necessarily going to mean much in an unprecedented era of WWE. True, Damien Priest was a late bloomer, but he's now on the championship tier, and is still improving fairly drastically. The one, who I think deserves to be on that tier, that hasn't quite made it is LA Knight. He's the same age as Damien Priest (born autumn 1982).

On a side note, that RAW was WAY more fun than last week's.
Next - I wonder what they have in store for the Judgement Day's internecine conflict.

Some old comments I made during/after Royal Rumble.

August 2024, TNA now has an ECW-like relationship with WWE with their exchanges between TNA and NXT that Joe Hendry yesterday confirmed on air was a long term thing. I wonder if that means in 5-6 years TNA will be purchased by WWE, or if they'll see that the company is more valuable as an independent entity?

And what's happened with Liv makes Royal Rumble me happy - Liv now owns the RAW women's division and the rebel Judgment Day faction.

Priest and Rhea are being pushed as top baby face acts on RAW

Hopefully they keep the momentum especially for Priest.

Hopefully true. I’m big fans of Rhea and Priest, and I’ve been a fan since their NXT days.

On a sad note, Kevin Sullivan passed away at 74.
Dexter Lumis just started wearing the Kevin Sullivan face makeup with the Wyatt Sicks.

Bronson Reed has been getting on my radar since earlier in the year when he had this crazy match against Ivar that stole the show early in the year. He's been doping this thing where he splashes opponents a number of times in a row. On RAW, he splashed R-Truth, and the crowd erupted in boos... the refs and officials oblivious to how they could stop this, waving their hands at him... not thinking they could move R-Truth out of the way, so Bronson splashes him a bunch more times... crowd booing. Bronson is on his way out and the crowd suddenly changes tune "One more time! One more time! One more time!" So he goes back for another splash.

Best moment of the show, IMO.

The main event shows Bron Steiner making fewer mistakes than he did before. The guy is quick learner. That was a fantastic match considering the shorter time than what it deserved.

Overall it was a good RAW.

I usually watch Raw on Hulu, and they cut the Reed thing out :(. can't wait till they move to Netflix.

Yeah, and I hope Netflix stays out of the influence from advertisers... otherwise, they might revert back to a 1990s style TV situation where offended letter writing committees can voice their right to censor.

On a side note, With the death of Afa last night, both Wild Samoans have died this summer. A big loss for Roman Reigns's family (his father and uncle).

I've been playing WWE in my home office during work mornings (since I'm the only one in my family who wants to watch it more than once a month! :D), thus why I'm only getting to Smackdown on Monday mornings.

I will say this, Andrade puts on stellar matches all the time, the crowd gets really into it. Probably in the top organically ascending stars right now in my personal estimation. I can't help but have this music go through my head every single match he has:

On a related note. I feel like almost every star is ascending in WWE right now. Maybe it's because so many of the established stars are on the bench. But it feels like late 1999 to mid-2000 in that way, where it felt like almost everyone on the show is a rising star. Some more than others. There are a few that aren't, a small minority are stagnant (Carlito, Seth, Tyler Bate, Ivy Nile), even fewer are actually falling/languishing (Bayley is the only one that comes to mind). It's like in NXT a few years ago, where it felt like 95% of the talent were on the upswing.

It feels a bit more like the good part of Russo's booking. While there was a lot of bad stuff with Russo booking, the positive thing is that he always tried to have everyone on the roster doing something. Even with the midcard there was something going on.

At least in the last few years of the Vince era there were a lot of cold matches. Meaning just two people in the ring without much of a reason to take up time. But now, pretty much everyone is involved in something. It's not always working (see the Final Testament) but pretty much everyone is involved in something. Makes the show so much easier to watch. And it gives you a reason to care outside of the main events. 

Definitely the best the WWE has been in a long time. 

Yeah, the Final Testament feels like they have a lot of potential, but they're stuck in a Jericho-spills-coffee-on-Kane level storyline.

I hate to go Internet-booker, but I'm wondering if they need to have a bit of a gimmick change, right now they feel a bit like the Truth Commission when there's the Ministry and the Brood who are going to get first dibs on those cult-storylines.