3 Ups & 9 Downs From WWE Raw (Jan 25)

8. Burning First-Time-Ever Matches

Charlotte Flair Shayna Baszler
WWE.com

Just to remind you, it just feels like Shayna Baszler has been a part of the Raw roster forever. In reality, she’s still barely a year into her run on the red brand.

And yet, WWE seems to love taking first-time-ever matches with people like her and just burning them for no reason whatsoever. Last month, we got Baszler versus Asuka on Raw as a prelude to a Women’s Tag Team Championship match, when it could have been a PPV match for the Empress’ Raw Women’s Championship.

On Monday, Baszler fought Charlotte Flair in the first-ever singles match between the two, which ended just seconds into the bout when the Queen slapped on a Figure Four, but Nia Jax interjected for a DQ.

This wasn’t Mandy Rose versus Naomi or something like that for the first time. Baszler still could be a credible threat atop the women’s division, one of the few wrestlers who could give Charlotte trouble. But no, this was all a backdrop for another tag title match, as well as Flair’s rivalry with Lacey Evans.

Just… why?

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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.