8 Ups And 7 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (May 9th)

Big Cass in the main event? WTF indeed.

dean ambrose jacket
WWE.com

If you enjoy being lied to about the main event, a potted plant receiving a chant and your new killer tag team jobbing, then Monday Night Raw was just what the doctor ordered. Sure, in reality it wasn€™t a bad episode, and there were plenty of entertaining moments, but there were moments where you had to wonder just what WWE was thinking (as usual).

Like, does anyone (outside of Shane McMahon) actually buy that Stephanie McMahon is coming around to her brother€™s way of thinking? Or, do champions and challengers really need to win matches leading up to PPVs, or can they €œbuild momentum€ for the big matches in defeat?

Most importantly, what does it say about your world champion when he can€™t close out Raw, presumably because of fear of crowd reaction? Roman Reigns and the Usos battled AJ Styles and the Bullet Club in a six-man elimination tag match, a bout that typically would be the main event, but that spot went to a match that never happened. Was the Reigns match bumped to the top of the 10pm hour for ratings, or because WWE knew Roman would be booed (though after a thunderous booing, fans mysteriously began doing dueling chants between he and Styles)?

So what delivered and what fell short? Let€™s get to it

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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.