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

3. Tag Match Filler A-Go-Go

Dolph Ziggler AJ Styles Otis
WWE.com

Here we are on the go-home Raw before SummerSlam, so you know they’ll be doing the hard sell for the PLE… with tag team matches out the yin-yang.

We got every conceivable matchup: the combine-two-singles-matches-into-one-tag (Drew McIntyre & Bobby Lashey versus Sheamus & Theory), the odd-man-out (Bloodline versus Street Profits & Riddle – not Brock Lesnar), the tag-to-set-up-another-tag (Mysterios versus Judgement Day) and the strange bedfellows with nothing to do (AJ Styles & Dolph Ziggler versus Alpha Academy).

That’s a lot of tag team action, with only one being a straight tag between two existing tag teams. Otherwise, it felt like tag team matches to fill time and use as a shortcut to plug SummerSlam matches. That leads to you not being really invested in these matches as a fan.

None of the matches were bad, but they were tough to get excited for… save for the main event, and that’s as much a function of the star quality as anything else.

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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.