4 Ups & 9 Downs From WWE Raw (July 19)

Downs…

9. 11, 13, 14, Who Cares?

Charlotte Flair
WWE.com

When WWE changes its own counting midstream, you know they’re just not trying.

Charlotte Flair came out to celebrate her latest title win, which the announcers (and later, Flair herself) put over as her 11th women’s championship reign. However, she had been calling herself a 13-time champ forever on end, and they were talking up her 14th victory Sunday night.

So what happened? Apparently, they’ve decided to nix the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship run (which is fair), and axe the NXT Women’s Championship reigns from her total. Just like that, she’s down to 11. though you could argue that retiring the Divas Championship and immediately going on as the WWE Women’s Champion (which became the Raw Women’s Championship) as separate reigns is a bit of a cheat.

Regardless, Charlotte’s promo was painful, as she continued to call herself the opportunity, while Rhea Ripley is an opportunist. It’s just amazing that the two of them resurrected this rivalry with a great title match Sunday night, trying to write months of booking wrongs, and then they went right back to substandard writing.

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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.