The biggest winners and losers of last night's Raw (August 26)

While nowhere near as bad as the string of Raw episodes this spring, last night's episode was a come down from the past few weeks. Aside from the King of the Ring matches, the rest of the show saw a fairly pedestrian build with some questionable booking decisions, along with "wild card" idiocy sprinkled on top of things, as we saw a completely meaningless match between Bayley and Nikki Cross.

Who got the most and least out of last night's show? Let's go over and do a recap.

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Winner: Sasha Banks

This was supposed to be a pipe bomb style promo. It never quite landed its punches, but it at least set up Sasha Banks' motivations for her current persona and villainous turn. After taking unmasked shots at the meaningless women's tag team titles, her expression of jealousy for Becky Lynch and all her success wasn't hard to miss.

Later, Sasha Banks decisively defeated Natalya. It wasn't a remarkable match by any stretch, but it let us know that she means business. That basically describes her entire night on Raw. Solid, but unspectacular. She did the job that she needed to do for the occasion.

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Winner: Ricochet

Ricochet continues to be the most successful of the 2019 NXT callups. In a match that might be described as an upset, he defeated Drew McIntyre in the first round of the King of the Ring tournament. It's mildly shocking to see the once-promising McIntyre go out so easily, but it's even more a sign of the favor that Ricochet has obviously won backstage.

At this point, Ricochet needs to be considered the favorite to become 2019's King of the Ring. Whether that will mean anything beyond an accolade remains to be seen. If he wins, it hopefully won't be his ceiling.

Loser: The Miz

Absent a sudden, miraculous spurt to wind it down, The Miz probably won't look back on his 2019 as being a good year. After his lackluster feud with Shane McMahon, he's done nothing of note, now losing in the first round of the King of the Ring tournament to the manifestly inferior Baron Corbin, who was an abject failure as a main event performer in the spring and early summer.

It's hard to see where The Miz goes from here. He'll be on call to do whatever he needs to, but it probably won't be anything substantial.

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Loser: The Raw Tag Team Division

The thrown together, random pairing of Dolph Ziggler and Robert Roode defeated a plethora of other tag teams last night to challenge Braun Strowman and Seth Rollins at Clash of Champions. They just won with no build to their partnership.

Meanwhile, the other teams, including the previous champions in Gallows and Anderson, who have some beef with Strowman after last night, didn't emerge as the contenders to reclaim their lost crowns.

This sort of thing is why tag team wrestling is such a joke in WWE.

Winner: Cedric Alexander

Unsurprisingly, given the talent involved, this was an excellent TV match. You almost didn't want either man to lose, but in the end, Cedric Alexander emerged victorious in the first round of the King of the Ring tournament. He probably won't win the whole thing, but it's nice to see the former cruiserweight champion finally getting some shine after languishing for months after his call-up.

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Losers: The OC

AJ Styles retained his United States Championship last night after a disqualification, but he, Luke Gallows, and Karl Anderson were all laid out flat by the monster in the aftermath.

Just a few weeks ago, it looked like the three of them were going to become the dominant force in Raw's midcard. Now, Gallows and Anderson have lost their titles while AJ Styles is looking bad in meaningless matches to a man that has no chance of actually winning the Universal Championship next month.

This is the kind of booking that ensures that nobody is a star.

As much as NXT has declined this year, it usually avoids this kind of stuff.

Are you sure you're happy about it coming to the USA network?