3 Ups & 9 Downs From WWE Raw (May 24)

Downs…

9. Where Is Everyone?

Someone break out an extra-large milk carton, because we had a ton of missing superstars on Raw on Monday night.

If you’re keeping track, the Viking Raiders have vanished. Randy Orton wasn’t on the show. Lucha House Party and Mace & T-Bar were absent. Angel Garza, Jinder Mahal, Alexa Bliss and Mustafa Ali weren’t booked. And if you discount the promos welcoming fans back, Braun Strowman, Jeff Hardy, Dana Brooke & Mandy Rose, Damian Priest & John Morrison didn’t have any storyline roles to play on Monday night.

That’s a large swath of the roster to basically be inactive for a three-hour program, and while we got some decent wrestling out of the mix, it still felt like they were trying to simply fill three hours but do it without using half the roster. The result was a very uncompelling show that felt lacking.

This isn’t to say that everyone should be on every show, but when you can tick off more than a dozen regulars who weren’t on the program, that’s quite noticeable.

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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.