6 Ups & 7 Downs From WWE Raw (April 24 - Review)

1. And Finally…

Triple H
WWE.com

If you needed more proof that WWE badly botched the booking of Cody Rhodes and the main event of WrestleMania 39, look no further.

It’s impossible to both defend the decision to beat Cody at Mania and applaud this new title as smart, well thought-out booking. If WWE was intent on having a second world title, it was right there.

It would not have been hard to have Rhodes win the Royal Rumble and declare he’d challenge for just one of the two world titles (the WWE Championship his father failed to win). You could have had Adam Pearce declare Roman needed to defend the Universal Championship at Elimination Chamber (again, against Sami Zayn) in that situation.

Just like that, Cody is a world champion on one brand, and Reigns is still continuing on a near-three-year run as Universal Champion on the other. That also would solve the “one world title is inferior to the other” problem, as well as have two prestigious titles instead of one being brand new.

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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.