5 Ups And 8 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (March 9th)
4. Phoning It In
Kudos to Brock Lesnar for making his first appearance on WWE programming in a month. Sadly, the part-time WWE World Heavyweight Champion was not joined in person by two fellow WrestleMania attractions, who chose rather to let videos and special effects stand in for them. Both Sting and Undertaker made their presences felt Monday night, but neither showed up for different reasons. Sting is contractually limited to just a handful of appearances, while Taker is seemingly being kept off screen to build mystique surrounding his eventual return to WrestleMania. Both appearances were effective for what they were, but you cant help but feel like these feuds suffer a little by not having the opposing force directly respond. A bolt of lightning and a video package cant substitute for a face-to-face confrontation. In Undertakers case, he actually does have the mystique to make it work, and any mystique Sting has would be lost if he grabbed a microphone and started talking. But these feuds just feel like boats being propelled by one oar instead of major Mania matches gliding strongly toward shore.
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.
