10 Ups And 6 Downs From WWE Raw (Nov 18)

Have you ever heard of 'brand supremacy'?

Lana Bobby Lashley
WWE.com

If you’re the type of person who simply counts the ups and downs, then you’d think this was one of the best episodes of Raw in years. And make no mistake, this was a good show overall.

However, Raw was beset with an ongoing, three-hour ailment. Thankfully, it’s treatable, and the prescription is time. Let six more days pass, and everything will heal itself.

You see, Survivor Series is an affliction. It infects WWE for about a month, with normal rivalries being pushed aside for the good of this concept of “brand supremacy,” a WWE term that means absolutely nothing. It doesn’t mean that one brand gets some sort of reward, like a lump sum of cash, or new contracts, or the #30 spot in the Royal Rumble matches, or even a damn trophy.

They get to brag that they’re the superior brand – for all of one week before everyone goes back to their respective shows and have to start building to the next PPV.

So despite some good in-ring action Monday night, the brand supremacy nonsense permeated a good chunk of the show, dragging it down. While the ups were noteworthy, some of the downs were colossal.

Still, Raw gets passing marks here, but we’d really give an award to some enterprising WWE writer who convinces the brass to change course for Survivor Series 2020.

With that said, 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 fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.