7 Ups And 6 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Jan 23)

Downs...

6. ‘Showcasing’ In A Six-Man Tag Match

Sometimes WWE can’t help but trip over itself, even when it’s trying to do right.

Case in point, it appears the company is repositioning cruiserweight Mustafa Ali as a good guy in an attempt to break down the stereotype of all Muslim characters (aside from Sami Zayn) as bad guys. (This reversal must have started on 205 Live, which this writer hasn’t been able to watch consistently.) This is admirable.

But in an attempt to showcase Ali on Raw in front of a much bigger audience, they stuck him in a six-man tag match that lasted about three minutes, giving him all of 30 seconds of offense before he finished Drew Gulak off with a beautiful inverted 450-degree splash.

If the goal was to make Ali stand out and have fans rally behind him, why bury him in a six-man tag match? Why not a singles bout, or at worst, a standard tag match that was given five minutes? Plus two points for effort, minus three for execution.

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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 fortunately became a fan in time for WrestleMania III and came back as a fan after a long high school hiatus before WM XIV. Monday nights in the Carlson household are reserved for viewing Raw -- for better or worse.