7 Ups And 4 Downs From WWE Raw (Dec 30)

2. Blake, Murphy Light It Up Again

Blake Murphy Black
WWE.com

Aleister Black and Buddy Murphy had a really good first encounter earlier this month at the TLC PPV. Monday night, they hooked it up again.

And the return engagement was better than the original. The two went through a slower opening, complete with Murphy faking out Black and mocking his sit-down pose, only for Aleister to come right back with his own version. They kicked it into a higher gear in the second half of the bout, trading strikes and big-time moves, with Murphy hitting his jumping knee and Black nailing a brainbuster for a close 2 count.

Murphy’s Law was countered into a rollup, which gave way to two Black Masses to finish Buddy. It was a little surprising to see WWE go with two straight wins for Black rather than 50/50 it to set up a rubber match, but Black is the brighter star right now, and Murphy actually proved himself in defeat both times.

The trick is to have Murphy transition to win a feud after this – if this was the end of their little rivalry, which it might not be.

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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.