4 Ups & 5 Downs From WWE Raw (16 February - Results & Review)

1. A Dangerous Combination

WWE Raw Bronson Reed Jimmy Uso
WWE

Raw opened Monday night with a combination of events and personalities that served to tank interest right out of the gate, which is not the kind of tone you want to set at a time when momentum hasn’t been in WWE’s favor.

The Usos opened Raw and were making their way to the ring when Paul Heyman cut them off and put the kibosh on the crowd yeeting to their entrance. That in itself was actually a smart little moment, and it seemed to be setting up a direction for the tag champs and a midcard heel stable that has been rendered directionless with its top guy on the shelf.

Instead, The Vision members prattled about the city and the masked man before Raw GM Adam Pearce came out to get them to leave. When that stalled, LA Knight interrupted, verbally sparred with Logan Paul (calling him a simple-minded broccoli-haired b**ch), and made an impromptu six-man tag match.

That match was long (or at least felt way longer than the 12 minutes it lasted) and was only made passable by Knight taking large parts of it, but the contest played out to a noticeably quieter crowd whenever LA wasn’t in there.

Sure, this might very well lead to a WWE World Tag Team Title match between the Usos and The Vision, but not a single word was spoken between them, The Vision has made no gesture toward the tag titles prior to this match, and the match itself revealed little chemistry between them.

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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.