5 Ups & 7 Downs From WWE Raw (July 5)

1. Everything Wrong With Women’s Division

Asuka Doudrop
WWE.com

If you were to look at the participants in the eight-woman tag match on Raw on paper, you’d think it should be a pretty good match: four former women’s champs, a former tag champ, and a former NXT Women’s Champion.

What we got was a middling mess that was more about “storytelling” than competition, but the angles are mindless and pointless. Eva Marie is a conniving coward who tags out to her “protégé” Doudrop to teach her a lesson(?) during the match. Nia Jax & Shayna Baszler are overwhelmed dealing with Alexa Bliss’ B-level magic show. Nikki A.S.H. is busy trying to show how she’s Almost a SuperHero (get it? ASH?!?). And then there’s Asuka and Naomi having to carry on like this is all normal around them.

What we were left with was something resembling a match that saw Nia down Nikki with a Samoan Drop, unceremoniously ending Cross’ recent winning streak out of nowhere. Then Eva Marie announced herself as the winner, and Jax & Baszler, two longtime bullies on Raw… did nothing.

Just… stop. Whoever is writing this stuff, please, quit and never pick up a keyboard again.

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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.