5 Ups & 5 Downs From WWE WrestleMania Raw (27 March - Review)

1. Too Little, Too Late, Part 2

Asuka WWE
WWE

Similar to the Damage CTRL debacle, the Raw Women’s Championship feud should feel like a main-event-caliber match. After all, Bianca Belair is closing in on one year as champ, and Asuka has at times been a dominant force who can tear through opponents like a buzzsaw.

And Monday’s video package on the Empress of Tomorrow was really well done, with Lita, Charlotte Flair, MVP and Corey Graves weaving the story of Asuka’s dominance in NXT and her success on the main roster. (Let’s just overlook her undefeated streak inexplicably ending at WrestleMania 34.)

But this solid video, which made Asuka look like the killer we all know she can be, paled in comparison to the weeks of “build” that consisted of the challenger assisting the champ during 2-on-1 situations, burping up blue goo and then laughing. And then we got the “BuT cAn tHey cO-eXist?” angle with Asuka and Belair tagging last week. (Spoiler: They couldn’t co-exist.)

Don’t let a good closing whitewash more than a month of horrific booking that killed any momentum or interest this Raw women’s title feud once had. Don’t reward them for one good video and a match that will undoubtedly be great on the night (because look at the two wrestlers competing!) overshadow piss-poor storytelling.

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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.