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

UPS…

8. Tozawa Wins Over Fans

Akira Tozawa Drew Gulak
WWE.com

It’s sometimes tough to judge a wrestler’s debut in just a couple minutes, but Akira Tozawa looks to have gotten fans on his side in his Raw debut Monday night.

Tozawa, who was one of the standouts from the Cruiserweight Classic last summer, clearly had toned down his offense for Raw, but he still worked in enough stuff – and plenty of yells – that fans were following along. The flurry at the end, followed by a snap German suplex for the pin, was probably more of what the entire match should have been, but we should just accept that WWE isn’t going to let the cruiserweights do anything at more than half-speed on Raw.

As WWE adds more and more wrestlers to the cruiserweight division, you have to wonder if that will help build it up in prominence, or if others will simply get lost in the shuffle. But Tozawa is definitely a welcome addition to the roster.

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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.