8 Ups And 6 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Sept 16)

4. Alexander Burial Continues

Just in case it wasn’t clear Sunday night, AJ Styles slammed the door on Cedric Alexander’s face Monday night.

After demolishing Alexander at Clash of Champions, AJ pinned Cedric in a six-man tag match cleanly, making it two nights in a row he’s toppled the young superstar. Then, just as Alexander looked to be getting a modicum of revenge, Styles slammed the door with a second-rope Styles Clash.

As a caveat, if we had any faith in WWE to actually tell a real, ongoing story, this could actually be a positive. Alexander is still young and new to WWE. Perhaps he’s just not good enough to hang with the legendary Styles. Cedric toils away and works his way back up to another title shot and finally achieves his goal.

But again, it’s tough to call this “storytelling” when we keep hearing of shows being rewritten on the fly, storylines being dropped, etc. It’s hard to view this as part of some long-term plan when it just doesn’t seem like WWE knows how to do that consistently. So for now, we’re keeping this as a “down,” but with an eye on any follow-up.