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 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.