8 Ups And 6 Downs From WWE Raw (Aug 10)

4. Bury Raw Underground

Shayna Baszler RAW Underground
WWE.com

Let’s take a look at both sides of Raw’s newest gimmick, Raw Underground.

On the one hand, we saw this before… when it was called Fight Club. Everyone in 2020 knows that WWE is scripted physical entertainment. So they know that this “shoot fighting” is also worked. But the idea is that this is some underground battle club with a mixture of established WWE superstars and NXT trainees, where there are no rules, apparently.

Given WWE’s history, it’s only fair to assume that this venture, which seemingly popped up out of nowhere last week, will flounder and fail, and be forgotten within a number of weeks. We’ve seen this happen far too often with this company, especially when they’re desperate for ratings.

And seeing how haphazard and disjointed this appears to be, it’s easy to be really skeptical of this poor man’s UFC worked shoot-fighting.

Advertisement
Contributor
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.