Raw has gotten really good at giving us extremes on its
program – and that’s not necessarily a good thing.
Monday night, we got a couple really solid segments, with a really
good Raw Tag Team Championship match that delivered the kind of action you’d
expect when two teams click really well and get time to tell a story in the
ring.
But we also got a lack of internal logic from characters,
some really poor wrestling, and (hopefully) an inadvertent belittling of a PPV
title match this Sunday.
The centerpiece of Raw right now very clearly is Becky
Lynch, as the red brand was dominated by the redhead, which works well, but
when she wasn’t on the show, the rest of the program was hit-or-miss.
And as always seems to be the case at this time of year, WWE
has trouble vacillating between building to WrestleMania in April and building
up Sunday’s Elimination Chamber PPV, which leads to odd scenarios, like
everyone focusing on Lynch facing Ronda Rousey at Mania, while Ronda has a
title match Sunday against Ruby Riott.
It’s a problem that’s going to persist as long as there are
PPV’s on the Road to WrestleMania and the 57 writers on staff can’t figure out
how to make it work.
With that said, let’s find out what did work and what didn’t.
Let’s get to it…
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.