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

Ups…

4. Priest Doesn’t Lose Cool, Learns From Mistake

WWE Raw Damian Priest AJ Styles
WWE.com

It’s a sad statement when you base an “up” on WWE doing the basic stuff correct and not doing something insanely stupid like they hinted.

But that’s what happened in the United States Championship match between Damian Priest and AJ Styles, who beat the champ last week to earn a title match. The announcers kept nodding toward Damian losing his cool repeatedly in recent weeks and how that could cost him the title, and we saw Priest getting flustered, which made you think they really were going to pull the trigger on a title change because the US champ has a split personality he can’t control.

Instead, the two had a measured match that mirrored last week’s affair, right down to the finish, where Priest ran the ropes and AJ leapt for a Phenomenal Forearm. This time, however, Damian put on the brakes and rolled up Styles for the pin, defending his title successfully and earning a respect handshake afterward.

Decent match, smart booking. If only they hadn’t spent the last three months with this stupid “I have a Damian side in me” BS.

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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.