8 Ups And 6 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (May 2nd)

1. Rematch-A-Go-Go

charlotte natalya
WWE.com

Look, it€™s understandable that some feuds are going to go longer than one month and span more than one PPV. It€™s the nature of the business. Some great feuds have gone on for the better part of a year. But when an upcoming PPV card starts to look very similar to the last one, you have to stop for a second.

Already, two championship rematches have been announced for Extreme Rules: Roman Reigns versus AJ Styles for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship, and Charlotte versus Natalya for the Women€™s Championship. The Intercontinental Championship looks like it will be defended in a four-way match that combines two singles matches from Payback: Sami Zayn/Kevin Owens and Miz/Cesaro. It looks like Chris Jericho and Dean Ambrose are headed for a rematch as well. Baron Corbin and Dolph Ziggler also are continuing their rivalry.

If all of that stands, that€™s six of eight matches from Payback either being repeated or combined (the potential IC title four-way). While none of these rematches by themselves are problematic, all of them coming on the same back-to-back PPVs is just poor timing.

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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.