5 Ups And 7 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (July 13)

6. Way To Generate Interest

MVP WWE Raw
WWE.com

Did you know that it’s MVP wrestling at Extreme Rules, not Bobby Lashley? And that he’s facing Apollo Crews, not Ricochet or Cedric Alexander?

You’d be forgiven if you didn’t realize that, considering Crews, the United States Champion, hasn’t been on Raw the past two weeks, and that Lashley has been running roughshod over Ricochet and Alexander the past few weeks while MVP just runs his mouth.

That’s not to say that the pairing of MVP and Lashley isn’t working – it’s actually pretty effective overall. But a United States Championship match being sold by the challenger carrying around the new title while his muscle beats up two other guys who we’ve only seen being friendly with Apollo once or twice isn’t exactly a hard sell.

Hopefully the match will be decent but this has “placeholder” written all over it, with Crews likely retaining and Lashley then challenging to wrest the title away from him.

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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.