6 Ups And 8 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (July 1)

4. Doubt Creeps In

nikki cross alexa bliss
WWE.com

Even though it isn’t blatantly obvious, it’s pretty clear Alexa Bliss will turn on Nikki Cross at some point, after she’s used her.

But for the storyline to work, Cross has to believe Alexa is true, but somehow have enough hints that something is amiss. We saw some of those signs Monday night. Nikki was a guest on A Moment of Bliss when Carmella interrupted to point out that Alexa is using Cross. This led to a Carmella/Bliss match, which the Princess of Staten Island won in seconds. Then Carmella faced Nikki, who won cleanly after a couple minutes.

So Nikki had defeated Bayley and Carmella, prompting an interviewer to note to Cross that fans wanted her – not Bliss – to face Bayley at Extreme Rules for the SmackDown Women’s Championship. The look on Cross’ face told the story, as she clearly was starting to wonder whether Bliss’ intentions were pure.

That was a decent amount of storytelling Monday night.

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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.