7 Ups & 5 Downs From WWE Raw (May 16)

Downs…

5. Walkout

Naomi Sasha Banks
WWE.com

We’re clearly going to learn much more in the coming days about Sasha Banks and Naomi’s decision to walk out of Monday Night Raw, but as of now, there are no winners here.

Banks apparently wasn’t happy with the creative, and the WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions decided to just leave rather than work through their differences with the booking. Considering it forced a very late rewrite of the show, that’s got to be a pretty serious offense to higher-ups.

It calls back to mind “Stone Cold” Steve Austin walking out on WWE when he was scheduled to wrestle – and lose to – a rookie Brock Lesnar way back in 2002. Austin was able to mend fences, but he did a lot of damage to his reputation in the short- and medium-term.

It will be interesting to see what happens with the two superstars, the tag titles, and any plans for the women’s division going forward.

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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.