5 Ups And 10 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Feb 29)

After dropping a bombshell six weeks out from WrestleMania last week with a Raw that announced two major matches and stoked the flames of a third, it was going to be interesting to see if WWE could (as Michael Cole loves to say) build momentum Monday night.

Not only did Raw not €œbuild momentum,€ it demolished the upward swing, jumped in a crater, dug a few feet deeper, and then curled up to take a dirt nap for three hours. If you took Dean Ambrose out of Raw Monday night, you€™d have the most unwatchable episode in nearly two years of reviewing the show.

(Fair warning, the writer is suffering from several ailments right now, so some of the gripes might be flu-induced. Still, this was an awful episode of Raw €“ sick or healthy.)

Raw promised to name a #1 contender for the Divas Championship, which it didn€™t deliver. By itself, that€™s fine. Raw promised that Undertaker would speak about what he thinks about being ordered by Mr. McMahon to fight at WrestleMania, which he did, disappointingly. By itself, that€™s fine. Raw promised more McMahons than you could ever want on television. Sadly, it delivered that in spades, with three separate authority figure promos in the first two hours of the show to kill off the crowd.

The in-ring performances consisted of multiple two-minute (or less) matches that were instantly forgettable (Jey Uso versus Bubba Ray Dudley? Oh yeah, that happened too.). But we made sure to get another €œGolden Truth€ segment going nowhere and an in-show Subway commercial from the best female worker in the company, Natalya.

However, a word of applause to Dean Ambrose, who in the absence of #1 contender Roman Reigns and his own WrestleMania opponent Brock Lesnar, carried the show on his back, verbally and physically sparring with Triple H. Ambrose deserves a medal for his work, maybe something that fits around his waist, emblazoned with the WWE logo on it

So what rose to the occasion and what crashed and burned? Let€™s get to it