5 Ups & 10 Downs From WWE Royal Rumble 2022

6. Who Do You Cheer? Who Do You Boo?

Doudrop Becky Lynch
WWE.com

The Raw Women’s Championship match was beset with a huge problem from the minute the bout was booked: Both Becky Lynch and Doudrop were ostensibly heels coming in, so it was impossible for fans to really rally behind either woman.

Lynch has been getting cheered, but she most certainly is booked as a heel, being forced to work to get fans to boo her. Doudrop has been a heel for a while now, but fans really don’t have any reason to react much to her either way.

The match between the two wasn’t bad, but the crowd was silent for large parts, waking up for big moves and near-falls. But it was clear that they weren’t energized or hanging on the action or story of the match.

Even then, what was the story? Heel champ Lynch fighting from underneath? The larger heel challenger Doudrop being unable to put Becky down? Those two narratives aren’t exactly compatible, and it showed.

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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.