7 Ups And 5 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Feb 26)

1. A Smart Path Forward

Without rehashing everything, WWE botched how it had Roman Reigns emerge victorious from the Elimination Chamber, having Braun Strowman defeat everyone else, only for Reigns to beat him. The two of them splitting the eliminations would have been much smarter.

But Monday, WWE did something bordering on brilliant: They figured out how to really make Brock Lesnar the bad guy against Roman Reigns.

And by “bad guy,” we mean a villain to the institution of professional wrestling. The Miz has been trial ballooning it for a while now, pointing out that he is the only male singles champ who is on Raw weekly.

Monday night, Reigns lit into Lesnar, who was supposed to go face-to-face with him on Raw. Instead, Roman said people in the back didn’t want him to report that Brock wasn’t at Raw despite being advertised. He then called Lesnar “an entitled piece of crap” who doesn’t respect the business, the fans or the wrestlers in the back. Brock, Roman said, hides behind his contract and only shows up when he wants when the money’s right.

You know what? That worked. Fans cheered Reigns as the full-time wrestler blasting the absent champion who thinks he’s too good for WWE, but not too good to hold their title and cash their checks.

That is a winning message for Roman Reigns. Not “This is my yard,” not Michael Cole yelling, “the Big Dog!” over and over. Whether they can sustain this for six weeks remains to be seen, but for one night, this was a great move.