7 Ups & 4 Downs From WWE Raw (9 March - Results & Review)

3. Is It WrestleMania Season Yet?

WWE Raw Adam Pearce Seth Rollins
WWE

This is a totally subjective view, but does anyone else feel like Raw is for the most part just gearing up for any old PLE, and not WrestleMania?

Maybe it’s a function of the boom period being over, or a creative morass, but WWE programming just is not evoking those heightened emotions that come with the build to the biggest show of the year. The shows don’t feel urgent. The stories don’t feel necessarily big enough. The crowds aren’t nearly loud enough to feel like big things are happening.

It’s not a great strategy to blame fans for not reacting to what’s happening, but rather than viewing them as the cause, it’s probably better to look at them as a symptom of the problem. If fans aren’t coming unglued and in fact are sitting on their collective hands for large swaths of Raw, that’s a problem that really is tough to address in the near term.

That’s not to say that there is nothing that feels WrestleMania-worthy. The World Heavyweight Championship match certainly feels huge. Rhea Ripley and Jade Cargill is a big deal. If Oba Femi answers Brock Lesnar’s open challenge, that should move the needle a bit.

It’s just a feeling, but it’s tough to ignore it at this stage, less than six weeks out from WrestleMania 42.

Advertisement
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.