WWE Rumors: Why this week's Raw women's match was booked to be so long

Alexa Bliss, Naomi and Natalya
Alexa Bliss, Naomi and Natalya

What's the story?

This past Monday night on WWE Raw, a fatal four-way #1 contender's match took place which featured Alexa Bliss vs Naomi vs Carmella vs Natalya. The bout saw Natalya emerge victorious and she will go on to face Becky Lynch for the WWE Raw Women's Title at SummerSlam next month.

According to Bryan Alvarez on Wrestling Observer Live, the reason why WWE decided to book such a lengthy women's match is because Raw took place in the same venue as the first-ever WWE Evolution PPV.

In case you didn't know...

The fatal four-way women's match on WWE Raw this week lasted just over 24 minutes, and the fans in attendance grew very restless as the bout progressed, leading to numerous fan chants including "this is awful", "CM Punk" and "Goldberg."

Following the match, Alexa Bliss expressed her disappointment with the fans in attendance at Raw in Long Island, and she tweeted, "just disrespectful." Bliss went on to explain that while she encourages fans to cheer, boo and chant, she does not approve of fans being "rude."

The heart of the matter

During the most recent episode of Wrestling Observer Live, host Bryan Alvarez reported he was told WWE booked the Raw women's match to be so long because the show took place at Nassau Coliseum, the venue for WWE's 2018 Evolution PPV.

"I guess the idea was that they were in the same city that the women's PPV [Evolution] emanated from," explained Alvarez. "This was just what I was told. And [WWE] figured that in this city, they could do a long women's match and it would get over."

What's next?

Alexa Bliss' reaction on Twitter received a mixed response, with some fans defending her feeling that the Raw audience in Long Island was disrespectful, while some fans felt the Raw crowd was right to voice its displeasure because the match was poor in quality.

Earlier this week, we published an article offering a look at why Alexa Bliss was both right and wrong in her criticism of the WWE fans, and you can read that here.


How did you feel about the fan reaction to the Raw match? Let us know in the comments section!

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