6 Ups And 8 Downs From WWE Raw (Jan 6)

6. Improper Jobber Usage

AJ Styles Akira Tozawa
WWE.com

We’re gonna throw a penalty flag for misuse of a jobber-to-the-stars on Raw.

Since being drafted to Monday Night Raw, Akira Tozawa has been a go-to guy to have good TV matches with a variety of opponents where he gets in some decent offense, looks credible, but ultimately takes the loss against bigger stars.

We’ve seen Tozawa compete against Andrade, Buddy Murphy, Aleister Black, Drew McIntyre, and Ricochet, falling to all of them, but looking like a legit competitor.

Then Monday night hit. Tozawa squared off against AJ Styles, who dropped Akira with a Phenomenal Forearm seconds into the match, then picked him up at 2. Styles played around with Tozawa, hitting a draping DDT ala Randy Orton, then mocked the Viper a bunch before finishing Akira off with an RKO.

It was an utter embarrassment of Tozawa, which was unnecessary. If you were going to do all that, then stick him in there with a true no-name, or at least a name jobber who is known for losing with no offense, like No Way Jose or Curt Hawkins.

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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.