5 Ups & 7 Downs From WWE Raw (18 May - Results & Review)

6. Every Other Plunder Match

WWE Raw Finn Balor JD McDonagh
WWE

Was there anyone in the universe clamoring for a third match between Finn Balor and JD McDonagh inside of a month?

The two longtime friends and countrymen battled in a street fight Monday night to settle their feud, and they delivered a well-worked, paint-by-numbers WWE street fight. Kendo sticks? Check. Steel chairs? Check? Table spots? Check. Trash cans? Check. Interference from the heels? Check. Total lack of blood, violence, and aggression? Check.

This is the problem: Balor and McDonagh worked a technically fine match with some fun spots, but there wasn’t any semblance of hatred, anger, or revenge bleeding through those spots. It was a sequence of well-executed moves in the right order, eliciting “This is awesome” chants from the performative crowd.

It’s very tempting to just award an “up” to the match because Finn and JD worked hard to produce a perfectly fine street fight, but this was every WWE street fight we’ve seen during the past five years and will be immediately forgotten. Next week, will Balor be onto bigger and better things as a result of winning this rivalry? Most likely, he still will be feuding with the Judgment Day, rendering this result moot.

Good wrestlers having technically proficient matches should be the expectation, not a praiseworthy status.

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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.