8 Ups And 6 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (August 1)

4. Prioritizing The Women

Sasha Charlotte Raw
WWE.com

When was the last time Raw opened with the WWE Women’s Champion and her SummerSlam opponent jawing at each other? It has to have been quite some time, maybe years (does anyone remember Charlotte or Nikki Bella opening Raw?).

Putting Sasha Banks and Charlotte front and center – and then keeping them a focal point when Chris Jericho joined them – was a great way to capture the fans right away and show the importance of the Women’s Championship. They didn’t open with Finn Balor, Seth Rollins or Brock Lesnar, they had the women set the table for their SummerSlam rematch.

What made it better was that this wasn’t women being catty or petty. They went right at it, with Sasha bragging about taking the title and working in a good “one night stand” line that a guy could have delivered. And when the men (Jericho and Enzo Amore) came out, the women didn’t fade to the background, they stayed right in the thick of things.

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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.