5 Ups And Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Jan 5th)
3. The Ascension Gets Buried
One week ago, NXTs dominant tag team the Ascension finally debuted on the main roster (not counting appearances on Main Event) and dismantled the former Tag Team Champions, Miz and Mizdow. After several weeks of vignettes, they were treated as a force and it looked like they might actually make an impact in the tag division. Well, Vince mustve gotten bored with them already or doesnt get them, because Monday night, they were buried six feet under. During their promo, Konnor and Viktor compared themselves to and then belittled legendary tag teams Demolition and the Road Warriors. In response, JBL blasted them for daring to think they were better than Hawk and Animal. But it didnt end there. As JBL continued to take umbrage with the Ascension (and Booker T and Michael Cole joined in), the team destroyed a couple local jobbers, who JBL then mocked as not being real competition. Granted, the Ascension won decisively, but what was the point of having your heel commentator bury a brand new, heavily hyped team so vocally? Did they forget to shake everyones hand backstage or mess up some other unwritten wrestling protocol? All this does is make fans not care about the Ascension before theyve had a chance. Congratulations, no one wins.
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.
