4 Ups & 10 Downs From WWE Raw (Sep 7)

9. Forcing Tension

Natalya Mickie James
WWE.com

WWE loves its tropes, and one of the ones they insist on doing is building unnatural tension between babyface rivals.

We got to see this Monday night when Asuka and Mickie James were forced to team up against Natalya & Lana, one week before the two are supposed to face each other for Asuka’s Raw Women’s Championship. James respectfully challenged Asuka last week, and there was no real reason for them to be at each other’s throats, but Monday, they just couldn’t get along, bickering over who would start the match, delivering hard blind tags and generally trying to show the other up.

There really was no reason for any of this, other than to have next week’s opponents have a little friction between the two of them. Sure, they didn’t need to function like a well-oiled machine, but this was just ridiculously forced.

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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.