5 Ups & 5 Downs From WWE Raw (20 May - Results & Review)

2. A Messy Melee

Just because WWE put the Women’s Tag Team Championship around the waists of two incredible superstars, that doesn’t mean that they’ve solved the conundrum that is the company’s women’s tag team division.

In fact, it just highlighted the gulf in quality, coherence and popularity in one fell swoop. Bianca Belair and Jade Cargill are two megastars sitting atop a division plagued by poor booking, and Monday’s four-way match was a perfect example of that questionable matchmaking.

The bout broke down immediately in a badly timed pier six (eight?) brawl that quickly went to commercial break. When they returned, there was some modest action before Maxxine Dupri got the requisite hot tag and “ran wild” as things broke down again. The women attempted stereo Tower of Doom spots, but they took so long to set up that you could see the strings as they got into position.

All of this set up Zoey Stark and Shayna Baszler getting the win and earning a title match. As a pairing, these two teams should have a pretty good, hard-hitting title bout down the line. But it barely felt earned for the Raw duo, as they just drifted through the four-way and were in the right place to get the win.

If you wanted to build them up, Baszler and Stark should have run through the other three teams. Damage CTRL was the only other credible team in the match, and putting Zoey and Shayna over everyone strongly would have at least made them feel like they had a bit of momentum, rather than being sacrificial lambs eking out a win in a bad match.