5 Ups And 8 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Feb 27)

Raw rolled into Green Bay Monday night for the go-home show before Fastlane, the last PPV before WrestleMania XXXIII in five weeks. But despite having two PPVs on the horizon, Raw managed to largely be a snoozefest, save for a couple segments to open and close the program.

It didn’t help that Raw grinded out numerous meaningless matches between midcarders that were short and didn’t really move the ball forward. It would be one thing if Raw gave us meaningless matches that were highly entertaining, but that wasn’t the case. It would have been one thing if in lieu of good wrestling, we got several dynamite promos and segments, but save for two, it really was pedestrian.

Most notably, we saw Triple H return to confront a returning Seth Rollins as the two renewed hostilities in a feud that still is unclear whether it will come to fruition at WrestleMania. We saw Goldberg and Kevin Owens verbally spar ahead of their Universal Championship match that could either surprise or underwhelm. And we saw Roman Reigns and Braun Strowman square off in a feud that is clicking well, but also is peaking before Mania, leaving a question of what they will be doing in five weeks.

With that said, let’s find out what won a handicap match and what tapped out. Let’s get to it…

Downs...

8. ‘CM Punk’

A quick “down” for the fans who thought that chanting “CM Punk” in 2017 outside of Chicago is somehow funny or edgy.

Spoiler alert: It’s not.

The chant sprung up during Corey Graves’ sit-down interview with Seth Rollins about his knee injury. Rollins was playing up how he felt like maybe he deserved the blowback due to his previous transgressions, when fans started chanting for an erstwhile wrestler who has not competed in WWE for more than three years.

Unless we’re in Chicago, there’s really no good reason to chant for Punk, other than to pretend you’re clever. And sorry Green Bay, it’s really not clever. It’s played out.