6 Ups And 7 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (August 31st)
4. Owens Avoids 50/50 Booking
When WWE announced a SummerSlam rematch between evenly matched Cesaro and Kevin Owens, fans would be forgiven if they thought they could predict the outcome: Cesaro manages to eke out a victory. Its a booking strategy WWE has beaten into the ground: Book one guy to win the first match of the feud, then the other wins the next, setting off a potential tiebreaker, or just more matches to trade wins. However, Owens capitalized on Cesaros injured ribs and picked up his second win in eight days over the Swiss Superman. While that booking might frustrate many Cesaro fans, its refreshing to see one guy come out of the chute and win a couple hard-fought matches. In both cases, it was a small mistake or injury that cost Cesaro, but both were pretty clean wins for Owens, which helps him out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4rBRO5Jdww Now, this feud will likely continue, and its very possible Cesaro will win a couple encounters (and not all evenly matched feuds are bad ideas), but this was a nice start and once again produced an entertaining match between two of the best WWE has to offer right now.
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.
