4 Ups & 6 Downs From WWE Raw (24 Mar - Results & Review)
1. Contract Madness
On paper, Rhea Ripley versus Iyo Sky versus Bianca Belair is a fantastic, WrestleMania-worthy match, a rare triple threat that feels more like a reward rather than a cop-out of a match, an excuse to jam multiple wrestlers onto the card.
Clearly, fans are getting that dream match at WrestleMania 41… and yet WWE has managed to turn it into a mangled farce, a mess of an angle involving contract theft, the legality of signatures on said contract, and when someone gets their obligatory rematch.
Monday’s segment involving all three women and Raw GM Adam Pearce was a disaster on every level. There was Pearce pledging that Rhea signing the contract wasn’t valid, only to be interrupted by Iyo saying she’d face both women at the same time (this is something many fans and critics said should have happened weeks ago rather than this convoluted mess).
This triggered an interruption promo train, with Pearce becoming increasingly agitated that the ladies were squawking instead of letting him speak. Ripley did herself no favors when she said she “[didn’t] give a damn about WrestleMania”… despite signing and stealing the contract for WrestleMania last week.
All of this led to Pearce granting Rhea her rematch against Iyo next week, with the winner (advance spoiler: it’ll end in a schmoz so both move on) going on to face Belair at 'Mania. And then it broke down into a contrived, heatless three-way brawl between the women, with each wrestler getting a couple of spots in before Bianca stood tall.
Worst of all is that this entire segment played out to mere polite applause rather than the deafening reactions these three should be generating just weeks from WrestleMania. Even worse than worst of all, Pearce later made Belair the referee for next week’s title match, punctuated by Bianca whining, “I don’t know how to referee!” WWE managed to make the EST sound like a caricature.
Awful, awful stuff that made this feud actively bad rather than something to anticipate. The match will still be good, but expectations are now set just a foot off the ground.