5 Ups & 8 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (June 7)

4. Is It A Push Or A Burial?

Cedric Alexander Jeff Hardy
WWE.com

Remember how last week Cedric Alexander “won” his feud with Shelton Benjamin in a 45-second match via a thumb to the eye? It seemed like a backhanded way of putting a guy over.

Monday night proved that the victory wasn’t a push, but just a way to end that feud and send Cedric on to the next humiliation. Alexander (who has been with WWE for nearly five years) was portrayed as a young, brash upstart (he’s 31, the same age as Jeff Hardy when he won his first world title) who didn’t respect veterans.

Hardy served as the veteran who put Alexander in his place, catching Cedric mocking him and nailing a Twist of Fate and Swanton Bomb to put him away. And just like that, Prime Alexander was on the losing end to a guy who hadn’t won a televised match since January.

That’s not to say there’s any shame in losing to Hardy generally, but this just smacks of a burial, which would be so on-brand for Vince McMahon: beat one guy, then have the winner lose his next match so no one gains any traction. Watch them go 50/50 with Hardy and Alexander next week just to prolong things.

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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.