When they said this was a throwaway episode of RAW - as most episodes that fall on a holiday tend to be - they weren't kidding. The cold opening featured most of the locker room having a 4th of July dinner before a food fight broke out. Admittedly, this was a silly but fun segment. On a regular episode, any given match would've been the main event - WWE Champion vs IC Champion (with Dean Ambrose and The Miz hailing from Ohio), Seth Rollins vs Dolph Ziggler (also from Ohio), or John Cena and AJ Styles quickly turning into Cena, Enzo and Cass vs Styles and The Club. No, this is America's birthday dammit, and they're going to make the main event a 16-man elimination match featuring Team USA (consisting of Big Show, Kane, Bubba Ray, D-Von, Zack Ryder, Jack Swagger, and Apollo Crews) vs Team Multinational Alliance (consisting of Chris Jericho, Sami Zayn, Kevin owens, Cesaro, Alberto Del Rio, The Lucha Dragons, and Sheamus). The results can be found here.
I was about to say that there were no major storyline progressions but there actually was, it just has to be be done in promos as usual. For starters, AJ Styles and The Club made #BeatUpJohnCena a thing, where they planned out what they were going to do on each upcoming holiday for the rest of the year. As they beat up Cena, Enzo and Cass run in for the rescue, hastily setting them up in a 6-man tag team match for Battleground. This is good because it'll keep Styles and Cena II fresh, probably for Summerslam. Meanwhile, Charlotte and Sasha had a long, shouty promo about the women's title. And Becky got a quick win over Summer Rae, somehow setting her and Natalya for a match at Battleground as well.
In terms of interesting promos, that would go to The New Day vs The Wyatt Family feud, where Woods is doing the amazing character work. For once, someone is taking the Wyatt Family seriously and not even the Power of Positivity can stop Woods from worrying about Big E and Kofi and trying to keep them to stay away from them. Bray extended an invitation for the New Day to come over to their compound and this got Woods notably upset, even though Kofi and Big E were making making incest jokes about the Wyatt family earlier. The audience even got pretty vocal when Woods quietly walked away from them and left the ring, as if it was signaling the beginning of the end for the tag team champions.
Also interesting was Rollins cutting a long angry tirade of a promo on the announcer's table after his match with Ziggler, where he proceeded to talk more shit about Reigns (and get cheers because he's a heel??). Ambrose still remained neutral on the issue of removing Reigns from the main event but that doesn't stop him from messing around with Rollins. Even after his win over Miz, Ambrose psyched Rollins out by running back into the ring and walking past him to sit on the Spanish announcer's table to do commentary and promptly shutting up JBL. Ambrose also shuts up Rollins with Dirty Deeds on the Spanish announcer's table, to get back at him for last week. Sadly, Ambrose as a champ still isn't convincing a lot of critics (Vince McMahon fed a line to JBL on questioning Ambrose's stringy wet hair and he coolly reflected as him being naturally beautiful), which is making it more than likely that he's dropping the title at Battleground.
And finally, the main event, where it was expected that Team Multinational alliance would somehow turn on each other (thanks to Owens and Zayn), leaving Team USA to be the winner. I predicted that Ryder would be the last man standing for Team USA and I was half-right; Big Show tagged Ryder in to get the pin over Sheamus.
Battleground is being regarded as a low-level PPV, which is a dumb way of thinking considering that WWE has been trying to make every PPV matter following WrestleMania 32. The Shield Triple Threat is happening now because there's a good chance that all 3 would be separated (it doesn't really matter where Reigns ends up after the draft). Plus, it seems like a test run to see how good this feud can really get, now that Ambrose is the current WWE Champion.
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