5 Ups And 5 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Dec 11)

Downs...

5. Chicken And Egg

dean ambrose sheamus
WWE.com

It’s often a good thing to have matches announced ahead of time for Raw, but sometimes, bouts being announced seem to preempt the program and storylines themselves.

Last week, the Shield lost a tag title match after Samoa Joe interfered, allowing the Bar to retain. Thus, three singles matches were announced for Raw on Monday. Then Raw opened Monday night with Samoa Joe calling out Roman Reigns. The Bar attacked, and the rest of the Shield saved. The villains stood tall, and we were off to the races for the rest of the program.

But with the matches already announced, it was just a softening up (which didn’t work all that well, given the match results). Wouldn’t it have been better (and more logical) to have the attack happen, with Sheamus taking out Seth Rollins (which happened) and Joe taking out Ambrose (which also happened), setting up those two singles matches? Instead, the matches were already made, and then the attack happened.

It’s a minor gripe, but it might have worked a little better.

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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.