6 Ups & 5 Downs From WWE Raw (April 25)

2. Match Does Nothing To Help Belair

Sonya Deville Bianca Belair
WWE.com

Just one more beat about the Raw Women’s Championship match.

This was billed as a big homecoming match for Bianca Belair. She got zero promo time, barely got to flash any of her eye-popping offense, and really was just a sidekick to the show that was Sonya Deville throwing her power around. Belair didn’t look bad, but she was almost an afterthought in her own title defense.

The smarter way to book this would have been to have Deville walk out and immediately change the match to a no-DQ, no-countout handicap match, then bring Carmella and Queen Zelina out. Have Bianca fight from underneath from the jump and overcome the odds. Instead, the mess we got was just a big disappointment and left you happy for Belair, but not wowed by her for her hometown win.

It’s a shame that they opted for the trope of the authority figure being a loser who keeps changing the rules gradually rather than just giving us the match we got and letting things unfold. It could have salvaged this dismal segment.

Advertisement
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.