7 Ups And 7 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (April 18)

What sank and what swam when Raw came from across the pond?

roman reigns anderson gallows
WWE.com

WWE€™s European tour rolled into London Monday for the company€™s annual post-WrestleMania Raw from the O2 Arena, and it could best be described as an even-keel episode. There were a couple notable developments, but it also was a somewhat subdued episode compared to the past two Raws.

We saw several matches announced for Payback in two weeks, setting up a PPV that could easily best WrestleMania in terms of in-ring product. We found out whether WWE would allow members of the Bullet Club to acknowledge and interact with each other or just brush off their association, but then the result opened up another Pandora€™s Box. We also saw the recently debuted NXT stars continuing to chart out their WWE careers with wins across the board. And we learned that Roman Reigns can€™t so much as sneeze in London without getting booed.

Once again, the €œoverwhelming reaction€ from fans on social media allowed Shane McMahon to run Raw despite losing at WrestleMania in a match that carried that very stipulation. (This could easily be a weekly €œdown,€ but we€™ll just note it here for now.) At least Shane served a solid purpose, making a few matches for Raw and Payback and largely staying out of the way, unlike his sister and brother-in-law likely would have done. Win some, lose some.

So what sank and what swam when Raw came from across the pond? Let€™s get to it

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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.