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

1. You Had One Job!

The go-home show before a major PPV has one main purpose: Put over the event and sell fans on spending money to watch this can’t-miss show.

If you’re judging WWE on that basis, Raw was a dismal failure. Other than closing out the Bad Bunny/Miz feud strongly, none of the matches from the red brand escaped on Monday night looking like must-see action… at least not a WrestleMania-level match. Seriously, go back and think it over. Is there any match that you could see on a level of Rock/Steve Austin, Randy Savage/Ricky Steamboat, Brock Lesnar/Undertaker, or Ronda Rousey/Becky Lynch/Charlotte Flair?

Sure, as a normal PPV, several of these matches would work. But WWE failed to make Drew McIntyre/Bobby Lashley feel epic. They managed to make Asuka/Rhea Ripley complicated. They presented Shane McMahon as a bigger threat than two full-time wrestlers. And they turned the Fiend/Randy Orton feud into a bad B-horror movie.

If this writer was on the fence about watching Mania, Raw would not have tipped the scales the way WWE would have wanted.

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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.