7 Ups And 5 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Feb 13)

1. Women’s Title Merry-Go-Round

bayley raw
WWE.com

In no way should this be thought of as a knock against Bayley winning the Raw Women’s Championship.

However, Bayley winning the title now was likely a bad call.

Bayley’s appeal has been her underdog status, her struggle to win the big one. Witness her chase of Sasha Banks for the NXT Women’s Championship in 2015. It was an incredible story that culminated at NXT’s biggest TakeOver in Brooklyn. But for WWE, they made the decision to pull the trigger on a random episode of Raw, seven weeks before the biggest show of the year, WrestleMania.

Look, if this is going to be Bayley’s big moment, then so be it, and this “down” is somewhat moot. However, if we see Charlotte Flair regain the title yet again at the next PPV, Fastlane, only for Bayley to “win the big one” at Mania and break Charlotte’s PPV victory streak, then this was a stupid, stupid decision.

And after watching Sasha Banks and Charlotte trade the title five times during the latter part of 2016, it’s entirely possible that they’re setting this up for Charlotte to live up to her Queen of PPV moniker and win her fifth title reign at Fastlane.

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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.