7 Ups And 7 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (September 17th)

UPS…

7. AOP A-OK

Authors Of Pain Raw
WWE.com

Setting aside the silliness that is Drake Maverick as AOP’s manager, the duo of Akam and Rezar are hitting their stride nicely as an imposing tag team.

As this column has observed previously with Braun Strowman and Nia Jax, sometimes using jobbers to serve as cannon fodder for up-and-coming wrestlers is perfectly acceptable on Raw and SmackDown. In this case, jobber tag teams have been mauled by AOP in short order, with a Super Collider ending the opponents’ night.

At some point, they’ll have to up the ante, either with bigger opponents, or maybe doing 3-on-2 or 4-on-2 matches to have AOP show off a little. And sometime sooner or later, they’ll have to knock off an “established” tag team like the Ascension or B-Team to show where they stand.

But for now, this is perfectly acceptable until it’s time to start moving them up the ranks.

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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.