9 Ups And 7 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (March 7th)

3. Roman€™s Absence

Week after week, Dean Ambrose has taken a massive beatdown, either at the hands of Brock Lesnar or Triple H. And each week, the Lunatic Fringe has shown up the following week to compete.

Contrast that with Roman Reigns, who took a massive beating from Triple H two weeks ago and still hasn€™t been seen. If he shows next week, it€™ll have been three weeks he was out of action. (Granted, he has a real medical reason with surgery, but we€™re talking solely from a storyline perspective here.)

There was a school of thought that WWE held Reigns back because Raw was in Chicago Monday, but that would ignore that the next three episodes of Raw are in Pittsburgh (which booed Batista out of the building at Royal Rumble 2014), Philadelphia (which booed Roman at Royal Rumble 2015) and Brooklyn, hardly friendlier confines.

If WWE is thinking that keeping Roman out will make fans cheer him more when he shows up, the company could be in for a severe shock. Let him come back and stand toe-to-toe with Triple H like Ambrose is doing and see if they can infuse a personality into him and help him out. Otherwise, Reigns could be facing more of an uphill climb.

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.