4 Ups And 8 Downs From WWE Raw (Feb 14)

Spoiler alert: If you’re a longtime fan of Rhea Ripley, Raw should fill you with some hope and fire you up. If you love the Becky Lynch/Lita feud, you should still be happy after Raw. And RK-Bro fans won’t have any reason to be upset.

Beyond that though, Raw was a mess of poor writing that even WWE’s most gifted performers couldn’t elevate. When the punchline to weeks of therapy to address Alexa Bliss’ mental health issues is to give her a replica Lilly doll with the stuffing of the original inside and tell her she’ll only be cured if she keeps this doll by her side at all times… that’s when you know this show had derailed and crashed into a fireworks factory.

Tomasso Ciampa showed up to further a feud with Dolph Ziggler that saw the Show-Off’s tag team lose, because that’s how WWE builds rivalries – make everyone appear to be losers and it’s a battle to see who can get that one more victory than the other.

And since WWE is headed to Saudi Arabia, we got some Barry Horowitz-level back-patting as the company put itself over as a paragon of virtue and progress for women… on the same show where a mentally disturbed woman was told to carry to doll to stay sane, and another woman was taken advantage of because she wouldn’t sleep with a guy.

That’s WWE for you in 2022. At least the gauntlet match was straight fire.

Let’s get to it…