3 Ups & 10 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Sept. 6)

4. Showdown Fizzles Dramatically

Nia Jax Charlotte Flair
WWE.com

The one piece of intrigue Raw had heading into Monday was the seemingly very real animosity between Charlotte Flair and Nia Jax, as their match last week seemed to break down into a mini-disaster.

Monday’s rematch, for the Raw Women’s Championship, should have provided an opportunity for a hard-hitting bout that could pay off that unfortunate situation. Instead, we got a very awkward contest with Shayna Baszler getting on the mic at the outset wondering if Nia would choke. Then she got on the apron during the match, distracting Jax and leading to Flair hitting a top-rope Natural Selection to retain the title.

The match itself was barely a match, with Charlotte trying to walk out at one point after a shoving match. There were a handful of wrestling moves, but this wasn’t a real match – it was an angle disguised as a contest.

Whatever it was, it didn’t work, and it really just served to set up a Nia Jax/Shayna Baszler split or feud that no one cares about. The only good thing about this was that the writers didn’t figure out a way for Baszler to take pinfall in this match.

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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.