7 Ups & 9 Downs From WWE Raw (Nov 8)

5. Disappearing Into A Black Hole

Carmella Queen Zelina
WWE.com

Multi-person matches are tough to book at times. You sometimes want to highlight 2-3 people without the other participants, which requires them to disappear for a period of time, but that can become comically long.

Case in point, the five-woman match for a Raw Women’s Championship shot saw Liv Morgan get superkicked at the opening bell and fall out of the ring for a solid 3 minutes. She resurfaced on the apron, only to get knocked off and stay on the floor for another couple of minutes. Two moves took her out of action for nearly one-third of the match.

Bianca Belair also disappeared during this timeframe after being tossed into the barricade. A former SmackDown Women’s Champion, the EST was knocked out long enough to warrant calling paramedics.

Yes, the idea was to spotlight Rhea Ripley having to battle Carmella & Queen Zelina herself, but someone should have looked at that and thought, “This looks really silly to have the eventual winner laying on the floor for the first 5 minutes of a 15-minute match and take a former champ out for 2-3 minutes off a single bump.”

Advertisement
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.