7 Ups & 3 Downs From WWE Raw (Results & Review - 16 Oct)

1. Those Messy Women’s Divisions

Rhea Ripley Nia Jax Zoey Stark
WWE.com

A scattered, messy feel is hurting the singles stuff on the women's side too.

Rhea Ripley still hasn't had a concrete one-on-one feud to hang her hat on for longer than a month, and now she's been shoved into a five-way scenario for Crown Jewel. Hopefully, that match turns out to be fun, but it's nonetheless true that defending her title is secondary to everything else Judgment Day has going on.

If anything, wrestling women like Shayna Baszler and defending her prize on PLE feels like a nuisance to 'Mami'. That's a problem WWE must solve, but not by going the "open challenge" route Becky Lynch is with the NXT Women's belt. Becks will defend that strap vs. Indi Hartwell and Xia Li soon, apparently, and neither bout seems particularly interesting.

Raw's writers need to scan their own work in the main event picture and with the epic Bloodline story to find solutions. They can surely come up with situations and storylines way more exciting than all of this. There's nothing for fans to really chew on.

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Lifelong wrestling, video game, music and sports obsessive who has been writing about his passions since childhood. Jamie started writing for WhatCulture in 2013, and has contributed thousands of articles and YouTube videos since then. He cut his teeth penning published pieces for top UK and European wrestling read Fighting Spirit Magazine (FSM), and also has extensive experience working within the wrestling biz as a manager and commentator for promotions like ICW on WWE Network and WCPW/Defiant since 2010. Further, Jamie also hosted the old Ministry Of Slam podcast, and has interviewed everyone from Steve Austin and Shawn Michaels to Bret Hart and Trish Stratus.