5 Ups And 8 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (March 9th)

By Scott Carlson /

4. Phoning It In

Kudos to Brock Lesnar for making his first appearance on WWE programming in a month. Sadly, the part-time WWE World Heavyweight Champion was not joined in person by two fellow WrestleMania attractions, who chose rather to let videos and special effects stand in for them. Both Sting and Undertaker made their presences felt Monday night, but neither showed up for different reasons. Sting is contractually limited to just a handful of appearances, while Taker is seemingly being kept off screen to build mystique surrounding his eventual return to WrestleMania. Both €œappearances€ were effective for what they were, but you can€™t help but feel like these feuds suffer a little by not having the opposing force directly respond. A bolt of lightning and a video package can€™t substitute for a face-to-face confrontation. In Undertaker€™s case, he actually does have the mystique to make it work, and any mystique Sting has would be lost if he grabbed a microphone and started talking. But these feuds just feel like boats being propelled by one oar instead of major Mania matches gliding strongly toward shore.