9 Ups And 6 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Dec 26)

Downs...

6. Lawyers And Wrestling Don’t Mix

It would have been one thing if Charlotte Flair had lodged a complaint and got Stephanie McMahon to wipe her loss against Bayley off the books and ordered a rematch due to Charlotte’s shoulders being off the mat. But WWE decided to go one step too far Monday night.

Rather than keeping it simple, Charlotte yammered about being a Flair and how she got lawyers to talk to Stephanie and argued the case, getting the match expunged from the record books. Yes, it’s a heel tactic to whine and use underhanded methods to get what you want, but this was obnoxious for the sake of being obnoxious.

Throw in the trope of having Dana Brooke serve as special referee – complete with fast count while Charlotte used the ropes for leverage – and you have a clichéd overbooking of extreme measures. This could have been spread out over a couple weeks (loss gets tossed, rematch ordered; Dana as ref with a fast count; etc.), but it was crammed into one 10-minute segment.

However, this still should be a good feud and match overall, just as long as they don’t do Charlotte/Bayley every week between now and the Royal Rumble.