6 Ups And 7 Downs From WWE No Mercy 2017

4. Goddess Versus Empress Next Month?

During No Mercy, we received a teaser that could explain why Alexa Bliss retained her Raw Women’s Championship Sunday.

Vignettes have been teasing the arrival of undefeated former NXT Women’s Champion Asuka, but Sunday announced her due date: the TLC PPV on October 22. With the Empress of Tomorrow showing up in four weeks, it can’t be long before she has her sights set on the Raw women’s title. And for that reason alone, hotshotting the title to another wrestler now would have been a bad move.

Beyond that, announcing Asuka’s debut now was a smart move. Presumably, you had a bunch of fans watching No Mercy for the two big matches, and you might as well use that opportunity to plug the next Raw PPV, and announcing a big debut is one way to try to hook viewers.

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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.