On the December 6 edition of Raw, Becky Lynch defended her Raw Women’s Championship against first-time challenger Liv Morgan in the main event of Raw. The match had been built up for almost a calendar month, starting when Liv bested 4 other competitors in a Fatal 5 Way Match on November 8 to become the number one contender. It was treated very much as a big deal by the company, even booking it on December 6, exactly 17 years removed from Trish Stratus vs Lita match, the first women’s match to ever main event Monday Night RAW, a parallel they promoted quite heavily. After several very controversial promos between the two, involving what is up until now the best mic work of Liv Morgan’s career, there seemed to be quite a bit of intrigue surrounding the match. Liv Morgan got treatment from the company that she’s never received before, being portrayed as on Becky’s level, making this the biggest match of her career. Everything seemed to be right going into the match, and yet when crunch time came the whole thing was just so…dull. It wasn’t a bad match to be sure, but one couldn’t shake the feeling of something being missing, or just not clicking about the match.
Why Becky Lynch vs Liv Morgan Did Not Work
The Crowd
To put it bluntly, the live crowd was barely interested in this match. This may seem surprising given the build the match was given and how much intrigue there was, but in reality, it’s very unsurprising if still a little disappointing. First and foremost, let’s get it out of the way and address the elephant in the room; this was the main event to a weekly 3-hour-show that isn’t very good. Even if they were at their best, which they weren’t and I will be addressing later, they would have had an uphill battle trying to get that crowd invested in anything. Speaking of the crowd, they were in Memphis, a city with a notoriously iffy crowd, especially in the last half-decade or so.
Even with all this being the case, however, the blame cannot be laid solely on the Memphis crowd. It is hard to expect people to take Liv Morgan seriously when she has been portrayed as a mid-card worker for the majority of her tenure in WWE after only a month of saying she’s the number one contender. As nice as it was to see WWE give a match a month of build to breathe and create interest, it’s not enough time to completely change people’s perspective on a performer. Liv Morgan is absolutely capable of not only challenging for the championship but carrying it, of this there is little doubt, but the crowd has been conditioned to only see her at a certain level. Because of this, there was little doubt amongst the Memphis crowd that Morgan had any chance of becoming the champion.
The Booking/Writing
To expand on the point I just made, Raw is notorious for being a show of poor quality with no one and nothing of interest on it. WWE goes out of their way, as they have for the better part of a decade now, to make sure that every wrestler is perceived as completely equal to everyone else with very rare exceptions, leading to no one feeling special anymore, a method coined “50/50 booking“. This is not news and has been a common complaint about not only Raw but WWE as a whole for a while now. Still, it requires mentioning. Simply put, the crowd had absolutely no reason to actually care about anything that was happening in front of them. Why would they care about Liv Morgan? They’ve only ever been told to see her as a mid-card level talent, whose biggest claims to fame was being part of a forgettable trio in the Riott Squad, and a program with Bobby Lashley, Rusev, and Lana, which is now remembered as being one of the worst in the history of the company. They’ve been conditioned over years to perceive her as nothing but a joke, so to expect 1 win and 4 weeks of decent booking, along with the mention of Trish Stratus and Lita to overcome that was asinine.
Could Liv Morgan be a top player in the WWE? Absolutely. But it would take time. Time for her to rebuild herself and her character into something with momentum. Time to get the crowd used to the idea of her being equal to a top star like Becky Lynch. Time to beat other top stars such as Sasha Banks, Bianca Belair, Charlotte, and to morph the fan’s perception of her into something more serious. Certainly more time than 4 weeks. And none of this is to say she needed to change her character at all. Look at Big E. He’s still the same, fun-loving, loud, and vibrant superstar that got him over in the first place, he’s just beating bigger fish as of late, and the fans have taken notice of that. If WWE really wanted to do this match, it would’ve best been saved for something like the Royal Rumble or maybe something even farther off than that. Even if Morgan was never gonna win, it’s always smart to get the most out of a match that you can, and they certainly could’ve gotten more out of this one.
The Match Itself
For a main event match that had been built up for weeks, the action in this match was not only incredibly unremarkable but somewhat sloppy as well. This is surprising considering the talent of both competitors, Becky Lynch being one of the best wrestlers in the world over the last 3 years, and Liv Morgan being a very popular underdog with a rare, almost Rey Mysterio-Esque blend of charisma and athleticism. Do not mistake my criticisms as slights on the performers who are no doubt incredibly talented. Subjectively, I enjoy both Becky Lynch and Liv Morgan as performers. But objectively, this match just wasn’t very good. It wasn’t bad either, but whether it be due to it being a poorly laid out match or just not being worked very well, these two just didn’t click at all. Spot after spot it seemed like neither competitor was on the same page, mistiming moves and seemingly not knowing what the other was doing half the time. This and the fact that the spots they did hit weren’t very special or noteworthy, made this an incredibly average match. As stated before, it felt like it never left first gear, working at a slow and plodding pace that didn’t suit its place at the end of a 3-hour show. It also didn’t seem that Becky Lynch was working as hard as Liv Morgan, which may have been why they didn’t seem to be working very well together. If all of this wasn’t bad enough on its own, the match wasn’t very long at all, crippling its chances of becoming anything more than what it was. This is not to say the match needed to be half an hour-long, but it felt like the last third of the match, what is usually the most dramatic part of the match in the finishing stretch, got completely cut out or was nonexistent to begin with. Like the last 5 minutes of the match were just inexplicably absent. Instead, the finish came somewhat out of nowhere in the form of a lukewarm rollup finish, with Lynch using the ropes to steal the win. While this does protect Morgan and could plant seeds for a future match, it was a very lukewarm finish to an equally tepid match. Disappointing, and not the best they could’ve done.
In Conclusion
There are multiple reasons as to why this match didn’t work, some of which can be blamed on the performers, some on the crowd, and certainly some on the company. But regardless, at the end of the day, this was a major dud of a main event. Not all hope is lost though. The finish, while incredibly anticlimatic, does leave open the likely possibility of a rematch down the road with heavier connotations to it. Maybe then they can have the match they should have had last night. Or maybe it’s a case of two great talents just not meshing together well. All in all, time will tell.
