7 Ups & 4 Downs From WWE Raw (Aug 22)

1. False Advertising

Trish Stratus
WWE.com

You can understand why WWE had Trish Stratus stand up to Bayley and her cohorts, even threatening to come out of retirement to put the disruptor down, but that was an ill-advised move.

Stratus opened Raw in her hometown of Toronto and was quickly interrupted by the villains, who circled her until Bianca Belair, and then Asuka and Alexa Bliss intervened. But that didn’t stop Trish from stepping right up to Bayley and proclaiming that she “can real quick go from ‘I am retired’ to ‘I was retired,’ ” threatening to get back in the ring and fight her.

Unless is planning to have Trish fight Bayley on an upcoming Raw or at a PLE in the near future, this was not a great idea. Now, if they’re greasing the wheels for a singles bout at a fall PLE, then this gets a huge pass. But WWE is famous for doing this with legends, putting a thought in fans’ minds, and then not delivering.

So yeah, this was a huge pop for the hometown faithful, but it could have also put a match graphic in fans’ minds that WWE has no intentions of delivering. If that’s the case, this is a big whiff.

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Contributor
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.