3 Ups & 8 Downs From WWE Raw (April 5)

3. Ripley, Asuka Follow Banks/Belair Blueprint

Rhea Ripley Shayna Baszler
WWE.com

It’s tough to tell what’s worse: That both women’s championship feuds are mirroring each other in the buildup, or that the current WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions have been used as vehicles for both rivalries.

After Sasha Banks & Bianca Belair teamed up and then fell apart in their bid to win the tag titles, Rhea Ripley showed some heelish vibes last week with Asuka as they signed the contract for the Raw Women’s Championship, and then set up a tag match with the two of them taking on Nia Jax & Shayna Baszler.

On Monday, Ripley just flat-out turned heel by attacking her tag partner/WrestleMania 37 opponent during their tag match. And so for the second time in as many months, a women’s title feud that started out as respectful resulted in a heel turn during a side-feud with the women’s tag champs.

If WWE wanted to turn Ripley heel, just have her challenge and assault Asuka and be done with it. Simple, easy, done. But this company has to take the one feud that actually started out simple and direct and added a bunch of gaga to it for reasons… and it doesn’t work.

At least the match itself should be good.

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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.