5 Ups & 7 Downs From WWE Raw (Aug 16)

3. The Champ Is A Chump

Nikki A.S.H. Rhea Ripley
WWE.com

Another week, another opportunity to make your Raw Women’s Champion look pathetic.

This time, Nikki A.S.H. battled Rhea Ripley in a rematch from last week, and she lost cleanly in a pretty pedestrian match. Yes, Nikki got in some offense – a hell of a lot more than Charlotte Flair ever would allow – but your champ got beat clean five days out from a PPV, and the announcers acted like it was expected, or at least wasn’t a big deal at all.

Stuff like that makes you wonder if WWE brass is curious why their titles are mostly meaningless, or if they just don’t care. It really is a shame tough: Ronda Rousey and Becky Lynch built that title up over the course of more than a year, and now the champ is a cosplaying goof who boasts about “almost” winning matches.

But hey, we’re not the billionaire geniuses here, right?

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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.