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 isnt 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? Dont get it wrong: This isnt a lobbying effort for four Triple H segments on Raw. But its damn odd to see him barely show up each week while everyone else fights for a title shot. Hunter doesnt need to be on screen for half of Raw, but youd think the world champion would be on the air for more than two minutes each week.
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.
