5 Ups And 7 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Mar 2)

Poor wrestling, poor storytelling undo hot opening.

by Scott Carlson
Randy Orton Beth Phoenix
WWE.com

Watching the first 40 minutes of Raw Monday night, it was impossible to not feel like this was going to be an incredible program that got the bad taste of Super Showdown out of fans’ collective mouths.

And then the next 2-plus hours bludgeoned us into submission, leaving fans stunned at a horrible misfire of an episode. Raw just plainly wasn’t good Monday night, featuring poor wrestling, poor storytelling and mishandled situations left and right.

All of this followed a hot opening featuring Brock Lesnar finally coming face-to-face with his WrestleMania 36 opponent, Drew McIntyre. And the 2020 Royal Rumble winner showed no fear, taking the fight directly to The Beast – several times. It was the kind of opening that left you wanting more and wishing you could turn the calendar over to April and get closer to Mania.

Then we were treated to a Raw Tag Team Championship match that wasn’t the greatest in-ring action, but really hit all the right notes. So far, so good.

But Raw then went off the tracks, into a ditch and exploded into a fireball, a hot mess of poor action, worse booking and mind-numbing decisions. At least there’s always next week.

With that said, let’s get to it…

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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.