7 Ups And 6 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (March 9)

1. Black Once Again An Afterthought

Aleister Black Raw
WWE.com

Despite defeating AJ Styles at Elimination Chamber, his win wasn’t some career-defining victory. Rather, it was a by-product of the ongoing Styles/Undertaker feud.

Fast-forward to Monday, and Black was rewarded with another spotlight match against Seth Rollins, which optimists would say is a positive development if it means he’s moving into a more coherent storyline with an upper-card superstar.

And then minutes into the match, Murphy caused a DQ, leading to a beatdown that brought out the Viking Raiders and Street Profits. This then led to an eight-man tag match.

And Aleister? Vanished. Gone. Disappeared from our TVs and was barely mentioned for the last half-hour. Black got a “big match” that served only as a vehicle to get to an eight-man tag match that didn’t even include him.

Even the aftermath didn’t include Black, as it was Kevin Owens who (rightly) attacked Rollins. So Black has had two matches against top-level superstars on back-to-back days, and doesn’t have a clear path to WrestleMania, nor a feud going forward.

And now to the positives...

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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.