6 Ups And 7 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Jan 2)

3. Cruiserweights Sideshow

Recently in this column, there has been praise for developing the cruiserweights’ characters and allowing fans to see more of their personalities, which in turn would hopefully make them more invested in the wrestlers.

However, Monday night’s episode of Raw was all angle and minimal wrestling, and that was a disappointment. First, you had Cedric Alexander and Drew Gulak in a brief bout that was focused on Alicia Fox and how she’s become a distraction for Cedric. Sure enough, Fox managed to accidentally avert Alexander’s attention and Gulak scored a win. Then Brian Kendrick and TJ Perkins had their umpteenth battle, which lasted only a couple minutes (mostly in silence) before TJP hooked in a kneebar for the win. Remember when this was a PPV title match?

And of course, there was a recap of Jack Gallagher’s awesome gentleman’s duel challenge to Ariya Daivari. What made this a little too campy and all sideshow were the sound effects WWE decided to throw in, turning it from humorous to too silly.

We know it can’t all be serious wrestling, but it’s hard to sell 205 Live as a different style of wrestling when fans get 90-second glimpses at a time, and it really doesn’t offer anything. Give fans a five-minute, high-flying exhibition to at least hook some fans. We appreciate the effort to humanize the wrestlers, but Monday was too much.