5 Ups And 7 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Feb 25)
Big news from the Big Dog; Flair styles & profiles; an animal steals the show.
Raw had a lot potentially going for it Monday night. We knew we were going to hear from Roman Reigns for the first time in four months, and we knew Ric Flair would be celebrating his 70th birthday on TV.
It was safe to assume that Becky Lynch would violate her suspension in some fashion, and that the recent NXT call-ups would get another spotlight.
And you know what? We got all of that. We also got one hell of a surprise to close out Raw that really provided a huge freak-out moment.
So why did Raw drag like it did? And why was it largely a dud?
Because aside from those big moments? It was a fairly dull episode with pedestrian wrestling, minimal angle advancement and a total ignoring of the upcoming Fastlane PPV, which has only one Raw match announced so far.
For whatever reason, WWE seems to resemble a car stuck in the mud with its wheels spinning. There’s a lot of energy and motion, but not a ton of forward progress. Watching older episodes of Raw have really highlighted this problem, and seeing legends return Monday night and get huge ovations helped illustrate some of the problem.
There still is plenty of time before WrestleMania, but it looks like Fastlane is going to be ignored. Let’s see what developed though on the penultimate Raw before the next PPV. Let’s get to it…