6 Ups & 5 Downs From WWE Raw (Sept. 12)

Ups…

6. WRESTLING

Finn Balor Matt Riddle
WWE.com

If you like watching wrestling when you turn on a World WRESTLING Entertainment program, you were likely happy with what you saw Monday night.

Raw featured six matches, five of which ran 12-15 minutes. Out of 180 minutes of programming, matches consumed more than one-third of that time, 68 minutes. And the in-ring action was mostly good. You had two championship matches – including one title change – a return bout for a superstar who had been away for nine months, and a blood feud that was set up a week in advance.

There’s less reliance on backstage antics, which is great, and best of all, fans are reacting to the longer matches. This doesn’t mean that every match needs to go 12-15 minutes. In fact, at least one could have had five minutes lopped off. But overall, this is a positive trend.

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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.