5 Ups & 4 Downs From WWE Raw (18 Mar - Results & Review)

3. Tag Qualifier Saves Itself

WWE Raw Julius Creed Tommaso Ciampa Johnny Gargano
WWE

Monday’s tag team qualifier match between #DIY and the Creed Brothers was well on its way to being a major disappointment through the first half as the two teams struggled to get on the same page.

But knowing these four wrestlers, it was impossible to think that they would turn in a stinker, and they managed to pull out an incredible finishing sequence that salvaged the match and made it a winner by most people’s standards. Pretty much everything from Johnny Gargano’s hot tag through the pinfall was great, most notably Tommaso Ciampa and Julius Creed just standing in the middle of the ring and battering each other with slaps and strikes.

Creed attempted to pull off his anklelock/powerbomb combo (which he did against the Dyad in NXT), and although he couldn’t, he still managed to make it look smooth in dropping Ciampa’s ankle and plucking it again.

The finish itself was fantastic, with Ciampa rolling up Julius while ducking a Brutus Ball. Brutus Creed then pushed the pile over, and Gargano super-kicked Julius back over for the Ciampa pin to send DIY to WrestleMania for the first time in their careers.

Just great stuff from all four men. If they had pared the first half of the match in half, it probably would have been even better.

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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.