5 Ups & 7 Downs From WWE Raw (Jan 31)

4. Recasting Lashley

Bobby Lashley
WWE.com

After several weeks of slowly turning Bobby Lashley face, the All Mighty WWE Champion did an about-face Monday night, basking in his tainted victory over Brock Lesnar and avoiding a direct challenge.

Lashley came out slapping hands with the fans, but rather than talking about wanting to earn his stripes or being pissed at Roman Reigns for interfering, he taunted the fans and proclaimed his superiority. Even Brock called this out, asking where was the pride in celebrating a tainted win.

Lesnar then challenged Bobby to a rematch, but after some animated prodding from MVP, Lashley declined and bailed, now even down to being the heel “I fight on my own terms” champion.

While this 180 isn’t necessarily a great thing – they seemingly invested a decent amount of effort into turning Lashley face – it was probably the only thing they could do to logically salvage Bobby winning the title directly off blatant interference. Call it an “up” of necessity.

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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.