9 Ups And 6 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Feb 8)

4. Paper Champ

Go back in recent WWE history and look at who was world champion in the lead-up to WrestleMania. In three of the past four years, the champion has been a part-time wrestler (Rock in 2013, Brock Lesnar in 2015, and Triple H this year). A part-time champ presents unique challenges to a company that is trying to promote a world title feud as a major reason to buy WrestleMania tickets or order the PPV. The benefit of the part-timer this year is that Triple H works fulltime for WWE, so having him show up on TV weekly isn€™t a big deal: He did it for the past two-plus years as part of the Authority. So why is he suddenly reduced to appearances totaling less than two minutes per episode? Don€™t get it wrong: This isn€™t a lobbying effort for four Triple H segments on Raw. But it€™s damn odd to see him barely show up each week while everyone else fights for a title shot. Hunter doesn€™t need to be on screen for half of Raw, but you€™d think the world champion would be on the air for more than two minutes each week.