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

3. An Unceremonious Defeat

AJ Styles Aleister Black
WWE.com

Aleister Black lost to AJ Styles Monday night after being forced to run the gauntlet through a bruising pair of matches against Karl Anderson & Luke Gallows, which on its own wouldn’t be but a blip on the radar, save for one thing:

That was Black’s first pinfall loss on the main roster. For more than a year, Aleister has defeated all comers while slowly moving up the ranks and gaining support from fans. Monday, he was topped by Styles, who himself is a phenomenal wrestler, but is preoccupied with a potential WrestleMania match against the Undertaker.

If this was supposed to be building to Black facing AJ in a barnburner at Mania, then we could excuse this. But instead it’s setting up a rematch at Elimination Chamber, essentially a speedbump on Styles’ road to WrestleMania. Either they have Styles win again to look strong for Mania, or Taker helps Black out, making Aleister look weak.

Worse, they completely overlooked Aleister’s undefeated streak and just pinned him in a nothing match, with no mention of his winning ways. Just a very poor move on WWE’s part here.

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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.