Pull up a stool, order a cold one, and let's take a trip down memory lane to July 2021. The ThunderDome was a noble experiment, but by the end, it felt like being trapped inside a giant, neon-lit microwave. The creative team was running on absolute fumes, and the July 5, 2021 episode of Monday Night Raw was the ultimate evidence of that exhaustion.

If you were tuning into the Wade Keller Pro Wrestling Podcast post-show back then, the big talking points were simple. Did Kofi Kingston beating MVP actually mean anything? Were Drew McIntyre's sword-wielding promos actively killing his babyface momentum?

Looking back from the comfort of 2026, the answers to those questions are screamingly obvious. That episode was a perfect encapsulation of everything wrong with late-stage Vince McMahon booking. It was an era of fake momentum, narrative wheel-spinning, and stars getting buried under the weight of terrible scripts.

We were stuck in a television purgatory where the matches were decent but the stakes felt completely imaginary. Every episode of Raw felt like a copy of the week before, with the same people wrestling the same matches in front of a wall of pixelated faces. The Wade Keller post-show was a sanity check for a fanbase that was beginning to wonder if they were losing their minds.

The Kofi Kingston illusion and the seven-minute burial

Let's start with Kofi Kingston. In July 2021, Kofi was gearing up to challenge Bobby Lashley for the WWE Championship at Money in the Bank. To make the challenger look like a credible threat, they booked Kofi to face Lashley's manager, MVP, in the main event of Raw.

Kofi won the match, pinning MVP after hitting a Trouble in Paradise. The virtual crowd of LED faces cheered, and the commentators screamed about how Kofi had all the momentum heading into the pay-per-view.

But did it actually mean anything? Not a single damn thing. Anyone with half a brain knew exactly where this was going.

WWE loved to give babyfaces these meaningless television victories just to feed them to the wolves on Sunday. It was a booking pattern as old as time, designed to trick fans into buying a ticket. The victory over MVP did not elevate Kofi; it just checked a booking box.

The proof of this came just thirteen days later at Money in the Bank. Lashley did not just defeat Kofi; he absolutely dismantled him. The match was a total squash, lasting exactly seven minutes and thirty seconds of pure, unadulterated dominance.

Kofi barely got any offense in before passing out to the Hurt Lock. The victory over MVP on Raw was revealed to be a complete illusion, a cheap parlor trick that did nothing to protect Kofi's status as a former world champion. It was a frustrating waste of one of the most beloved babyfaces in the company.

This was the classic Vince McMahon trap. He would build up a challenger in the most lazy, predictable way possible, only to pull the rug out from under them when it mattered. It made the weekly television product feel completely inconsequential.

Why should fans invest in a three-hour show when the victories are wiped out in minutes at the next event? The post-show callers on Wade Keller's podcast were right to be skeptical, because WWE had trained them to expect the worst.

This kind of lazy booking didn't just hurt Kofi; it hurt the entire main event scene. When victories on Raw don't translate to competitive matches on pay-per-view, the entire product loses its credibility. It makes the champions look like they are playing on easy mode.

Kofi deserved a real, hard-fought program with Lashley, not a transition match designed to pad Lashley's stats. The fans wanted a fight, but instead they got a business transaction.

Drew McIntyre and the death of babyface cool

Then we have Drew McIntyre. In the summer of 2021, Drew was in a creative wasteland. He had spent the last year carrying the company on his back during the pandemic, putting on banger matches in empty arenas.

But after losing a Hell in a Cell match to Lashley, he was barred from challenging for the title again. Instead of finding a compelling new direction for their top babyface, the writers decided to turn Drew into a high school history teacher with a claymore sword.

Every single week, Drew would walk out to the ring, plant his sword Angela into the stage, and cut a promo that felt like a book report. He would tell long, winding stories about Scottish folklore, Loch Ness monsters, and ancient warriors.

The promos were over-scripted, stiff, and completely detached from what made Drew popular in the first place. He went from a badass, ass-kicking warrior to a guy who looked like he was auditioning for a local theater production of Braveheart.

The podcast callers back then were practically begging WWE to stop the madness. Drew's promos were not just failing to get him over; they were actively making fans want to mute the TV.

It was the same corporate scripting that killed Roman Reigns' babyface run in 2015. Vince McMahon could not help himself, wanting his top stars to talk exactly like him. Drew was struggling under the weight of a script that no human being would ever naturally speak.

To make matters worse, Drew was thrown into a feud with Jinder Mahal, Veer, and Shanky. The entire storyline revolved around Mahal stealing Drew's sword.

Yes, a multi-time WWE Champion was reduced to crying about a stolen sword on national television. It was the kind of cartoonish, low-rent creative that drove fans away in droves. Drew was too talented for this, but he was trapped in the creative black hole of Raw's third hour.

The contrast between Drew the warrior and Drew the storyteller was jarring. Fans wanted the guy who kicked Brock Lesnar's head off, not a guy lecturing them about Scottish history.

By forcing him into this role, WWE was actively stripping away everything that made him cool. It was a classic example of creative trying to fix something that wasn't broken, and in the process, breaking it completely.

The turning point WWE desperately needed

Looking back from 2026, it is easy to see July 2021 as the absolute nadir of Raw's creative direction. The show was bloated, repetitive, and deeply frustrating to watch.

The ThunderDome setup allowed management to ignore the real-time reactions of the fans, sweetening the crowd noise to cover up the silence. They could pretend that Drew's history lessons were getting over because they had total control over the audio slider.

But that bubble was about to burst. Just two weeks after this Raw episode, WWE returned to live crowds. The fans immediately let their voices be heard.

Drew's cheesy babyface act started getting mixed reactions, forcing WWE to eventually pivot. Kofi's squash loss paved the way for Big E to cash in his Money in the Bank briefcase later that year, providing a genuine feel-good moment. The return of live crowds acted as a harsh reality check for the booking team.

Without the live crowd to act as a quality control department, the creative team had spent months smelling their own farts. They convinced themselves that their storylines were working because there was nobody in the building to tell them otherwise.

But once the fans returned, the truth could no longer be hidden. The return to touring was a bucket of cold water that finally woke the company up from its creative slumber.

The July 5, 2021 episode of Raw remains a fascinating artifact. It shows what happens when a wrestling promotion is insulated from its audience and running on autopilot. It was a show built on cheap tricks, bad scripts, and a complete lack of long-term planning.

The Wade Keller post-show from five years ago captured a fan base that was tired, frustrated, and ready for a change. Fortunately for everyone, that change was just around the corner.