6 Ups & 5 Downs From WWE Raw (29 May - Results & Review)

3. A One-Week Reprieve

AJ Styles Seth Rollins
WWE.com

In case you missed it, WWE unveiled and crowned a new World Heavyweight Champion this month because Roman Reigns has been holding both existing world titles hostage for more than 400 and 1,000 days.

Monday was the big opportunity to make what has felt like a second-place trophy from the jump more special. And sorry, pyro and streamers alone don’t do the trick. Seth Rollins absolutely deserved an opportunity to get his flowers, but this was a chance for WWE to follow through on what Triple H said was going to be a working man’s title, a title that was regularly defended.

It was an opportunity for Rollins to issue an open challenge for the WHC rather than get mired in a tag team with a SmackDown wrestler (what’s the point of a brand split if a SmackDown wrestler can just show up on Raw and wrestle in the main event?). Imagine Rollins coming out and celebrating, then issuing an open challenge, with Damian Priest answering, and then he loses and everyone goes home happy.

We’ll give this a mild “down” for now, but WWE has to know they’re starting with a deficit with this title, so they need to use Rollins to get some good defences under his belt to establish the title.

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Contributor
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.