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

4. Kai, SKY Hang With And Topple Vets

Asuka IYO SKY
WWE.com

It wasn’t enough for Dakota Kai and IYO SKY to just get the win Monday night to advance to the finals in the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship tournament. The duo needed to look strong and like they were a legit threat.

Winning their bout against Asuka & Alexa Bliss relatively clean via blind tag was about the best way to go. Kai & SJY looked more like peers than newcomers trying to hold their own against multi-time women’s champions, which is what you wanted from 2/3 of the new dominant women’s stable.

They very smartly avoided conflict between Asuka and SKY, keeping that to a minimum, though it was IYO who got the blind tag and rolled the Empress up for the win.

Still, this was an energetic opener that made the insurgents look every bit on the level of the veterans and advanced them to the finals, while leaving the vets to figure out how to course-correct before Clash at the Castle.

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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.