8 Ups And 6 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Nov 28)

1. Beat The Champ To Get A Title Shot

Roman Reigns Kevin Owens
WWE.com

Of all the storyline standbys WWE loves to employ, few are more aggravating at times than having a challenger beat a champion in a non-title match to earn a championship bout.

That doesn’t mean that a champ should never lose, but there are ways to do it without making the title-holder look weak. If your champion is losing non-title matches, it makes the champ look relatively weak, especially if it’s a heel champ who needs to cheat to win. And really, that sort of thing doesn’t help anyone. The champ looks weak, so when he’s beaten, it’s not as big of an accomplishment.

So while Roman Reigns earning a WWE Universal Championship match against Kevin Owens isn’t a bad thing on its face, cleanly beating the champ doesn’t do him any favors, and it doesn’t make you want to watch Roadblock to see if Reigns can actually beat KO, because he just did.

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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.