5 Ups And 5 Downs From Last Night's RAW (Oct 20)

In case you forgot, WWE has a PPV coming up on Sunday called Hell in a Cell. But never fear; if you watched Raw Monday night, then you surely have Sunday circled in red three times on your calendar and an alarm set on your smartphone. Raw was one three-hourlong advertisement for Hell in a Cell, defining the term €œhard sell.€ It€™s what good wrestling go-home shows used to do all the time: make fans want to plunk down their hard-earned money to watch the PPV. And while John Cena versus Randy Orton, Part 387 is about a fresh a match as Hogan-Piper, that didn€™t stop WWE from doing whatever it could to make the pending contest as compelling as possible. The show also threw numerous other hard sells at fans during the three hours, pushing seven matches throughout the show, with very little wasted motion. But did it work? And was it entertaining? Using Raw as a commercial for a PPV only works if people first watch Raw and then buy the PPV €“ or in this case, subscribe to the WWE Network. The answer is that yes, this was entertaining and it probably did convince some fence-sitters to tune in on Sunday, but it was not without its bumps. So what were the peaks and valleys? Let€™s find out€