8 Ups And 5 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Aug 5)

Ups...

8. Nattie Shows An Edge

Becky Lynch Natayla
WWE.com

Poor Natalya has it hard when it comes to getting fans to invest in her. She’s played heroine and heel multiple times, and there just isn’t a huge reaction many times.

But at least her feud with Becky Lynch has allowed her to do more “shades of grey” rather than a straight black-or-white coloring. Nattie has mouthed off to the champ, and Monday, she got herself DQ’d for refusing to release the Sharpshooter on a rope break. Then she shoved Trish Stratus after the Hall-of-Famer tried to get her to stop after the match.

The finish worked on a couple fronts, as neither wrestler looked bad (Becky made the ropes and never tapped), with Natalya showing an edge that she’s lacked at many times. She normally would just turn heel to gain an “edge,” but just getting disqualified for refusing to break a hold – and then reapplying it after the bell – is enough to show she’s going to bring the fight at SummerSlam.

Yes, no one is really expecting Nattie to walk out of Toronto with the Raw Women’s Championship, but this was a nice little bit of storytelling here. We’ll give it a small “up” for that, but years of a “blah” attitude about Natalya can’t be overcome this easily.

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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.