6 Ups & 5 Downs From WWE Raw (Dec 12 - Review)
Downs…
5. A Sluggish Effort
It’s really hard to give a match a “down” when it looks like a wrestler might have competed hurt, but we still have to assess the match as it was presented.
Bayley versus Alexa Bliss should have been a fiery battle between two former women’s champions, both desperate to get a Raw Women’s Championship shot just a few weeks before WrestleMania season starts up.
Instead, we got a rather sluggish match that saw Bliss struggle her way through the bout, seemingly battling both Bayley and herself. At one point, Alexa seemed to injure her face or head, wincing and almost crying in pain. Moments later, she hit a hurricanrana that saw her head hit the mat harder than normal.
From then on, everything seemed to be at half-speed. Credit to Bliss for gutting it out – that’s not what this “down” is about. But if she really was hurt, they should have gone to a finish, rather than another five minutes of slow-mo action, including a couple of spots that involved Bliss’ head hitting the turnbuckles.
If she wasn’t really injured, there wasn’t a good excuse for the performance between two of Raw’s veterans.