7 Ups And 8 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (June 17)

DOWNS…

8. Back To Square One

Viking Raiders Raw
WWE.com

Let’s just establish this: It’s great to see the Viking Raiders on WWE TV once again.

But while it's worthy of applause, this gets a down for a couple reasons. First, it had been six weeks since the Raiders last had a match on Raw. That night, they demolished the then-tag champs Zack Ryder & Curt Hawkins, and it looked like they were punching their ticket to the top of the division. Then, they disappeared.

Second, when they finally surfaced on Monday, the Viking Raiders squashed a pair of jobbers. While it’s great to see them win convincingly, it’s a stark reminder that this is exactly what WWE should have been doing with the duo for the past six weeks. After beating the tag champs, they disappeared and went back to beating no-names.

It’s better than nothing, but we’re gonna mark this a “down” for this week until we see consistency and improvement in the Viking Raiders’ booking.

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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.