7 Ups And 7 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw

4. Building Without A Foundation

If you were going to try to pluck a wrestler out of the pack and make him into a title contender, how would you do it? You would probably focus on him with vignettes or promos and showcase him winning several matches against increasingly tough opponents, leading to a challenge and then a title match.

Even if you were going to try to compress all of that into two weeks, you still wouldn’t do what WWE is doing with Darren Young. Look, it’s admirable that WWE is trying to give Young a singles push and a PPV Intercontinental Championship match, but they’re skipping several steps here. He did a bunch of taped vignettes with life coach Bob Backlund, then became #1 contender by winning a battle royal when the other two participants eliminated each other.

Monday, he squared off against Alberto Del Rio in a match that could have raised his profile, but instead was simply a two-minute kick-and-punch match that ended with Young shoving Del Rio into Miz (who was on the apron) and rolling him up for the pin. By the way, that was Young’s first singles match on Raw or Smackdown in more than two years.

Young deserves a chance to succeed in singles competition, and he hopefully will get a chance to showcase his skills at Battleground against Miz, but it’s hard to be even mildly invested in his match as of right now.