8 Ups & 3 Downs From WWE Raw (19 Aug - Results & Review)

5. Sheer Willpower Babyface Turn

WWE Raw Kairi Sane Iyo Sky
WWE

Since returning, Damage CTRL ostensibly has been a babyface unit, though their actions and crowd reaction didn’t necessarily bear that out.

Apparently, the recipe to fix that was to have Iyo Sky run wild in a triple-threat tag title match. Damage CTRL, Pure Fusion Collective (urgh) and champs Alba Fyre and Isla Dawn battled for the Women’s Tag Team Championship in a mostly fun triple-threat. But it was Sky who stole the show with a dominant portion where she was in pure babyface fire mode, running through everyone. That, and Iyo playing to the crowd, served to really drive home the point and rally fans to their side.

The finish saw Shayna Baszler hook Kairi Sane in a Kirafuda Clutch, but Dawn and Fyre hit their double-team backstabber/swanton bomb to put Baszler down, retaining the titles for a bit longer.

Decent enough match, though the champs are still just there rather than the central focus of the division. They really felt like they were tacked on with their titles to the existing Damage CTRL/Pure Fusion Collective rivalry.

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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.