5 Ups And 6 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (September 24)

1. Dragging The Division Down With Them

Brie Bella Ruby Riott Hairmare
WWE

Aside from Brie Bella injuring Liv Morgan when trying to emulate her husband, the six-woman tag match between the Bella Twins and Natalya versus the Riott Squad was just atrocious.

We’ve seen the Riott Squad in action quite a few times, and while they aren’t setting the world on fire, they can hold their own. They’re competent in the ring and capable of having a good match. But with the Bellas (Nattie only briefly tagged into the match at the end), you have a duo whose repertoire is somewhat limited, whose abilities are passable at best, and who haven’t wrestled regularly in a few years.

That limited arsenal forced them to pull some godawful staples from the Divas era out of mothballs: the dreaded triple suplex, the twin roll-through flip, and the running dual hairmare. Truly, it was 2011 all over again. Monday’s six-woman tag match highlighted the chasm between the Divas era and today’s era for women and how far they’ve actually come.

It also showed that while the Bellas might be reality TV draws, they aren’t part of this iteration of WWE’s Women’s Evolution. They’re the homo erectus to the homo sapiens of today’s women’s division.

Advertisement
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.