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Ups & Downs From WWE RAW (Aug 5)

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Roman Reigns almost got taken out in a parking lot, and somehow Samoa Joe ended up looking like the good guy.

Simon Miller runs through the August 5 edition of WWE Raw from PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh, the final go-home show before SummerSlam. The episode leaned hard into its “whodunit” attack on Roman Reigns, gave Trish Stratus her first match back in a WWE ring in years, and closed out with Bray Wyatt’s Fiend persona putting a Pittsburgh legend on the canvas. Miller breaks down what worked, what didn’t, and what it all means with one pay-per-view left on the calendar.

• Roman Reigns survived an apparent hit-and-run in the parking lot, and Samoa Joe — the man everyone assumed was behind it — ended up checking on Reigns after a car plowed into his vehicle mid-argument.
• Trish Stratus teamed with Raw Women’s Champion Becky Lynch against Charlotte Flair and Natalya, a match that ended in disqualification when Natalya refused to release a Sharpshooter on Lynch, despite Stratus never legally entering the contest.
• Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross walked out of a fatal four-way as the new WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions, dethroning The IIconics and beating out Mandy Rose, Sonya Deville, and the Kabuki Warriors in the process.

The Whodunit Attack on Roman Reigns

The Reigns storyline has been built around a simple question all summer: who wants him hurt badly enough to run him down in a parking lot? Samoa Joe was the obvious suspect heading into this episode, given how openly he’d been needling Reigns, and Raw played right into that expectation by having Joe confront him near his car. Then a vehicle came flying in and smashed into Reigns’ ride while the two men were still going at it — and instead of finishing the job, Joe stopped to check whether Reigns was actually okay.

That reaction cleared Joe as a suspect in the eyes of most viewers, even if it did nothing to answer who’s actually behind the wheel of the mystery. It’s the kind of soap-opera beat WWE has leaned on for the Reigns character before, and going into SummerSlam weekend it’s still unresolved.

Trish Stratus Steps Back Into the Ring

WWE Hall of Famer Trish Stratus teaming with Becky Lynch against Charlotte Flair and Natalya was the kind of match that generates headlines just from the names involved. The finish, though, was messy by design — Natalya had Lynch trapped in a Sharpshooter and simply wouldn’t let go when the referee called for the bell, triggering the disqualification. The wrinkle that stood out to Miller is that Stratus never actually tagged into the match legally, meaning her presence was more about star power and storyline positioning than in-ring participation.

Samoa Joe went from prime suspect to first responder in the space of one segment — and somehow that’s the moment that made the whole angle click.

Andrade Tears at Mysterio’s Mask

Away from the Reigns intrigue, Andrade got a clean singles win over Rey Mysterio, and did it while making a point of grabbing and tearing at Mysterio’s mask throughout the bout. For a wrestler whose mask is as central to his identity as Mysterio’s, that kind of targeted disrespect is a classic way to keep a program simmering without needing a big angle attached to it — it’s a small detail, but it’s the sort of thing longtime fans of shows built around personality and image, similar to the kind of coverage you’d find in the celebrity space, tend to notice immediately.

The Fiend Ambushes Kurt Angle

Bray Wyatt’s Fiend character has been rolled out sparingly and menacingly all summer, and this episode gave Pittsburgh fans a hometown gut-punch. Kurt Angle, a WWE Hall of Famer and Pittsburgh native, was jumped by The Fiend and put down with the Mandible Claw right in front of his own crowd. It’s the kind of segment built for shock value on go-home TV, and it landed exactly as intended — a menacing character doing something nasty to a beloved hometown figure right before the pay-per-view.

New Women’s Tag Champions and the 24/7 Circus

The fatal four-way elimination match delivered actual title change stakes, with Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross beating The IIconics, the team of Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville, and the Kabuki Warriors of Asuka and Kairi Sane to claim the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship. That’s a real result with real consequences heading into SummerSlam, unlike the show’s recurring 24/7 Championship subplot, which took its usual detour into the absurd — this time landing inside an OB-GYN clinic, of all places, the sort of bizarre real-life-meets-storyline setting that would fit right alongside coverage in TV Trends.

Mike Kanellis got pinned by his own pregnant wife, Maria Kanellis, inside the exam room, only to turn around and pin her right back while she was resting in a hospital bed, reclaiming the title before the segment even wrapped. It’s the title’s whole gimmick in miniature: nobody holds it for long, and the settings keep getting stranger. Kanellis walks out of Pittsburgh still wearing it — for now.