7 Ups And 8 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Feb 20)

4. Sacrificing Your Tag Champs

roman reigns karl anderson
WWE.com

Roman Reigns absolutely needs to look strong heading into Fastlane and his match against Braun Strowman. To best gain sympathy, he should be vulnerable – which WWE has done a nice job by having Strowman gain the upper hand during most encounters – but he can’t look too weak.

However, having your Raw Tag Team Champions get obliterated in a 2-on-1 match is probably not the best way to get that point across. Sure, Reigns used a steel chair to get disqualified before he speared and Superman punched the tag champs, but it still left the two men heading into a title defense at Fastlane unable to beat one man.

Handicap matches like this are a mixed bag: If you’re doing it right, you sacrifice lesser talent who can stand to lose despite having the advantage. If you’re doing it wrong, you sacrifice your tag champs to once again try to get over your “biggest star” for what amounts to an undercard match.

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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.