6 Ups And 5 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Aug 14)

3. Crickets

You would think a match involving a six-time women’s champion would get some reaction from a hot crowd, but you’d be wrong.

Mickie James versus Emma was met largely with silence, as the two accomplished wrestlers tangled in a short, forgettable match. Emma and Mickie are perfectly capable of having a good match, and nothing they did Monday was “wrong,” but the lack of reaction is more of a result of how the women’s division has been portrayed than anything else.

WWE has conditioned fans to view the women’s division as a top and a bottom, with Sasha Banks, Bayley, Alexa Bliss and Nia Jax at the top, and Mickie, Emma and Dana Brooke at the bottom. So when you had a match involving two women in the lower tier, the fans just instinctively sat on their hands.

It’s really a shame that fans have been conditioned to not care about two talented performers. Thankfully, this is fixable, but it still was disappointing Monday night.