3 Ups & 6 Downs From WWE Raw (12 January - Results & Review)

5. ‘Hometown’ Advantage

WWE Raw Finn Balor
WWE

This American isn’t going to pretend to understand all the geopolitics of the island of Ireland, but aren’t Ireland and Northern Ireland separate countries?

Yet, two Irish-born superstars on Monday night talked about wrestling in Belfast, (Northern) Ireland next week as giving them homefield advantage. Finn Balor is billed from Bray, County Wicklow, while Becky Lynch hails from Dublin, both of which are about a two-hour drive to Belfast.

Even WWE’s graphics department used the Union Jack to represent Raw in Belfast next week, rather than the tricolour. That renders all the “home game” chatter kind of moot, doesn’t it? Maybe it’s a mite better than Drew McIntyre having to act like Cardiff, Wales was just around the corner from Scotland at Clash at the Castle, but come on.

Maybe all of this is just semantics, but it felt more like WWE screwing around with geography because it was simple and cheap heat for Balor to claim homefield advantage from a neighboring country, which is still an ocean away from Chicago.

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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.