7 Ups And 4 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Jan 8)

Downs...

4. Wrestling In Slow Motion

mandy rose bayley
WWE.com

Let’s be upfront here and call this a very gentle “down.”

While watching the women’s tag match, there was something off that was tough to put a finger on. And then it hit: Everyone was moving fluidly through the ring, except Mandy Rose, who looked like she was moving through molasses.

To be fair, she’s essentially a rookie with about two years under her belt since Tough Enough ended. But in a stable that is supposed to be running roughshod over the women’s division, Rose didn’t quite fit. She’s already a better wrestler than Dana Brooke, but everything she did looked slower than her counterparts, like she was thinking about each move as she did them.

That kind of thing should get better over time, and hopefully it will. This was nowhere in the neighborhood of a Jackie Gayda match, but she was off enough to detract from the match a bit.

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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.