6 Ups And Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Feb 23)
1. No Taker(s) For Wyatts Challenge
The slow build to a major match is a difficult dance that must unfold carefully. Rush too quickly and youll burn through everything with time left before the PPV, forcing the angle to be stuck in neutral when it should be ramping up even more. Advance too slowly and you risk losing the fans interest. Bray Wyatt has been delivering cryptic promos for several weeks now, basically since the Royal Rumble. He has single-handedly been building a feud without a named or seen opponent. Sunday at Fastlane, Wyatt finally named his opponent the Undertaker and used the Deadmans entrance to great effect. The table was set for Taker to respond in kind Monday night and nothing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVzIO16eVto This leaves four episodes of Raw for everything to come together. While that still is a lot of time left for Undertaker to confront and ultimately accept Brays brazen challenge, its disappointing that WWE missed a great opportunity to do something to further this burgeoning feud sound a gong, send out the real druids, etc. You have to figure that Taker is going to play mind games of his own at some point, and time is slowly running out. If WWE wants fans to get invested in this as a major match, they have to give us more than great Bray Wyatt promos to actually care about the match.
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.
