WWE RAW: 5 Botches and mistakes you probably missed this week

This week's episode of WWE RAW was the penultimate show ahead of the Royal Rumble next weekend. The show was centered around Alexa Bliss and the fact that she has now stepped out from behind The Fiend's persona to become an entity all on her own.

Bliss was able to pin the RAW Women's Champion Asuka in this week's main event which means that Little Miss Bliss could be handed a shot at the title in the coming weeks, if not at the Royal Rumble pay-per-view itself.

Randy Orton also addressed the WWE Universe after his own altercation with the new deranged version of Bliss last week where the former World Champion showed off his new masked look and revealed that he suffered first-degree burns in the fireball attack.

Whilst this week's episode included some important storyline advancements and swerves, there was also a lot of filler content and a lot of botches from both the WWE superstars and the production team.

Here are just five botches that the WWE Universe noticed this week from WWE RAW.

---

#5. Peyton Royce and Charlotte Flair have some issues on WWE RAW

Charlotte Flair is currently embroiled in a storyline on WWE RAW with Lacey Evans, after The Sassy Southern Belle set her sights on Flair's father. This week, Evans looked to distract Charlotte and cost her the match against Peyton Royce, but it wasn't enough to put Flair off her game.

The match between the two women wasn't the usual spectacle that the WWE Universe is used to seeing from the former WWE RAW Women's Champion and there were several awkward moments throughout. Lacey Evans also only entered the arena in Ric Flair's entrance robe for a few seconds before leaving again, which was strange.

There was one moment in particular where The Queen took Royce into the corner and looked to set her up for a kick to the left leg. Royce's leg fell off the rope twice before the former WWE Women's Tag Team Champion quickly decided to reverse the move instead.

The fact that Royce and Evans were able to defeat Flair and Asuka a few weeks ago on WWE RAW means that the two women should be given a Women's Championship match in the future. This means that this feud could be set to go on for a while yet.

#4. Mace botches his finisher on Xavier Woods on WWE RAW

RETRIBUTION has been struggling to pick up any kind of momentum since their debut on Monday Night RAW last year, but it appears that the group has decided to pick on one person at one time and use the numbers game to their advantage.

First, their target was Ricochet, who refused to join their group. So it appears that the team has moved on after weeks of the same result. Now, Xavier Woods has become the target of the group and after defeat at the hands of T-Bar last week on WWE RAW, Mace stepped up.

Kofi Kingston is currently suffering from a broken jaw, so Woods was forced to go it alone against the four men who all, once again, came out to ringside and played their part in the match.

Whilst Mace was able to pick up quite the victory, it's worth noting that his finisher wasn't the best. It appears that the former NXT star needs to work on his spinning sidewalk slam if he intends to use it on WWE RAW in the future.

#3. Drew McIntyre's impersonator loses his wig on WWE RAW

Drew McIntyre was unable to be in attendance for this week's episode of WWE RAW once again after being quarantined following his positive COVID-19 test last week.

This meant that WWE was forced to get creative when it comes to building up the WWE Championship match between McIntyre and Goldberg at next weekend's Royal Rumble pay-per-view.

Instead, the company decided to welcome back Gilberg and a Drew McIntyre impersonator who allowed The Miz to put himself over as Mr. Money in the Bank and send a warning to both stars in the upcoming match.

The issue here was that McIntyre's stand-in was forced to wear a wig and a kilt. But his kilt didn't cover all of his anatomy throughout the time he was on WWE RAW, and he managed to knock his wig off his head as he came through the curtain.

It was nice to see Gilberg back on WWE RAW following his recent health scares and he was once again able to do an impressive job of building up the match in his own way.

#2. There were several production botches throughout the night on WWE RAW

WWE's production team had several problems throughout this week's episode of WWE RAW since there were certain camera angles that weren't needed and edits that seemed rough and didn't appear to be on the show's usual level.

Many fans online noticed that this week's episode of WWE RAW was heavily reliant on pre-recorded footage and filler content, as the company looked to point the focus at the Royal Rumble, but some of the cuts were scrappy.

The biggest production botch came when WWE was showing the WrestleMania video from earlier in the week, when several stars announced the upcoming locations of their biggest show of the year.

Whilst the video was still airing, the feed cut out and instead came back into the arena where Alexa Bliss was making her entrance, before going back and finishing the video again.

It's unknown if the feed cut out or if a member of the production team believed that the video had finished. This was the most obvious production botch of the night, but it was definitely not the only one.

#1. Bobby Lashley misses Riddle's foot and Riddle then sells the wrong one on WWE RAW

Bobby Lashley and Riddle have been feuding over the United States Championship now for several weeks and this week's episode of WWE RAW saw Lashley target Riddle's foot, and the fact that he doesn't wear shoes.

As part of a backstage segment, Lashley stamped on Riddle's foot ahead of their six-man tag match, but the camera was in the perfect place to show that Lashley didn't stamp anywhere near his foot.

Lashley was closer to Riddle's right leg when he performed the stamp, but the former NXT star decided to instead sell his left leg, which has left members of the WWE Universe confused by the whole segment.

Riddle later had his foot taped up following the stomp and went on to wrestle his match against The Hurt Business whilst still selling the leg. It was a strange segment that pushes forward another reason why backstage segments on WWE RAW should be pre-recorded in the future, so that these kinds of errors can be ironed out.