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

3. The Battle For Relevance

Titus O'Neil Darren Young Raw
WWE.com

In a way, you really want to believe in Darren Young and/or Titus O’Neil. Both men clearly want to make something of their WWE careers, but their tag title reign was a disappointment, and their singles careers never took off.

Monday, the former Prime Time Players squared off in a match that played mostly to silence. O’Neil manhandled the smaller Young, unleashing a few power moves to wake up the crowd but ultimately winning with a rollup with the tights.

It was a cheap win, but they needed to establish Titus as a villain. However, this was accomplished better afterward when Titus threatened to knock Bob Backlund out, drawing an angry response from Young. Had something like that happened beforehand, it might have given fans a reason to care about Darren and dislike Titus upfront, rather than initial apathy.

Maybe this will translate going forward, but man, were there some serious crickets during their 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.