5 Ups And 6 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Feb 19)

Men run the gauntlet, women make fans run for the exits.

braun strowman wrestlemania logo
WWE.com

Well, that was certainly something different.

It’s safe to say that even if you’ve watched every episode of Raw during the past 25-plus years, you’ve never seen what we saw Monday night: a gauntlet match that opened the program and lasted for more than half the show. All seven men in Sunday’s Elimination Chamber match competed, with Seth Rollins looking like a million bucks and Braun Strowman picking the bones.

It was surprising to see such a long match, as previous gauntlet matches have burned by in less time than the Roman Reigns/Seth Rollins segment of Monday’s contest. And while we shouldn’t expect to see this again, it was refreshing to see WWE try something different.

We also saw the women competing in their chamber match square off in a tag match, although the results left fans more wary of how that pioneering match could look with some very inexperienced wrestlers competing in it.

And… we didn’t see much else. It’s almost surprising that there’s a PPV on Sunday, with only four matches announced and very little else that could be cobbled together at this point. Oh, but there will be a contract signing too, so tune in for that!

With that said, let’s find out what ran the gauntlet and what got run over. Let’s get to it…

Advertisement
Contributor
Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fortunately became a fan in time for WrestleMania III and came back as a fan after a long high school hiatus before WM XIV. Monday nights in the Carlson household are reserved for viewing Raw -- for better or worse.