That fateful Monday night in July
Dusting off the archives and listening to the post-show breakdowns from July 20, 2021, is honestly like watching a car crash in slow motion. We are talking about the night Karrion Kross—the guy who spent months looking like a literal monster in NXT—walked out on Raw and got cleaned up by Jeff Hardy in a match that lasted just under 2 minutes. It was perhaps the most efficient character assassination in modern wrestling history. You spend your entire budget building an entrance that takes longer to walk than the actual match lasts, only to have the guy lose because of a rollup.
The Karrion Kross fumble
People love to talk about booking philosophy as if it is some mysterious science, but this was pure ego management. Kross arrived on the main roster sans his manager, Scarlett, and minus the aura that made him a commodity in the first place. Watching the fallout on that old podcast, you can hear the genuine confusion in the commentary. It was not just that he lost; it was that he lost to a version of Hardy that was clearly being phased out of the main event picture entirely. It set a tone for the Triple H-era transition that felt sloppy. If you need a refresher on why those mid-2020s shows felt so disjointed, recent show recaps highlight exactly how disconnected the NXT call-ups were from their original personas.
Cena vs. Reigns and the stale main event
Then we had the John Cena return to challenge Roman Reigns. Don’t get me wrong, the pop for Cena was legitimate electricity, but it felt like comfort food for a company that had lost its creative direction. We were back to relying on icons from 2006 to steer the ship because nobody trusted the new blood. The writing staff was in a tailspin, clearly pinning their hopes on a SummerSlam program that relied more on name value than actual heat. Watching back those segments, you realize how desperate the product was for a fresh coat of paint. It was the wrestling equivalent of a franchise rebooting with the exact same cast.
Goldberg and the cash-in chaos
Goldberg showing up to challenge Bobby Lashley was the cherry on this disaster sundae. We were treated to a string of segments where the stakes felt artificial at best. Seeing Nikki A.S.H. cash in on Charlotte Flair felt like a frantic attempt to create a babyface moment when the crowd was clearly burnt out by the sheer repetitiveness of the booking. It was disjointed, messy, and proof that nobody in the back had a concrete plan beyond the next commercial break. You can still hear the desperation in the crowd noise from those recordings, shifting from bored silence to confused popping.
The lesson we never learned
Five years removed, that 2021 episode serves as a masterclass in how to waste potential. We look at modern standouts and often forget the gauntlet of bad booking they had to survive to get there. Whether you think the current product is hitting its stride or not, you have to admit that the 2021 Raw era was a low watermark for continuity. Wrestling works best when there is a thread connecting the storylines, and that night in July was just a pile of loose, tangled yarn.
If you enjoy looking back at these train wrecks, I encourage you to check out historical show archives to see how far we have drifted from those dark days. The booking was lazy, the debut handling was atrocious, and the reliance on part-timers was at an all-time high. I miss the passion, but I certainly do not miss the booking committee’s lack of vision during that summer. It was a time when the show felt like it was written in a blender, and honestly, we are lucky the industry survived the lack of coherent direction presented on that broadcast.
