6 Ups And 6 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Aug 7)

5. Cruiserweight Misfire

akira tozawa ariya daivari
WWE.com

Since they joined the Raw roster last year, the cruiserweights have been hit or miss in many of their segments on Monday nights. But Neville’s ascension as Cruiserweight Champion has helped balance things out for the better.

Monday, however, we got a subpar backstage segment with Neville, and then a lackluster match between Akira Tozawa and Ariya Daivari that served only as a backdrop for Titus O’Neil and the announcers to banter back and first about Tozawa’s shoulder. Titus as a hype man might work decently, but color commentary is not his strong suit.

The most interesting part of the segment was the seeming disdain that Booker T has for Titus coming through in their conversation. And when that’s the most memorable part of the segment, that should tell you that something went wrong.

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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.