5 Ups And 9 Downs From WWE Fastlane 2017

4. Charlotte… Loses On PPV?!?

bayley charlotte
WWE.com

For the past several months, WWE has made a huge deal out of the fact that Charlotte was undefeated in PPV title matches, winning 16 straight such bouts. All signs pointed to the Queen putting her title and her streak on the line against the ultimate underdog on the women’s roster at the biggest PPV of the year. The script wrote itself.

Except that WWE instead opted to completely abandon that script. First, Bayley won her first Raw Women’s Championship on a random episode of Raw. Then on Sunday, she defeated Charlotte at Fastlane, handing the Queen her first PPV title match loss on a B-show four weeks before WrestleMania.

Seriously WWE, WTF? You spent months upon months building this streak up and then ended it like that? And with Sasha Banks getting involved at the end to boot?

What an absolutely awful decision. This feels like one of those instances where Vince McMahon realized that everyone assumed and expected the storyline to go a certain way and changed course just to be unpredictable. And it of course was still a stupid decision.

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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.