WWE Raw's #UltimateDELETION - Review & Reaction
Obsolete, or a WONDERFUL treat?
Until relatively recently, WWE were exhaustingly obsessed with their own Twitter game.
Behind the curve as Vince McMahon allegedly always prefers to be, Social Media was an area they felt a need to suddenly assault rather than approach, so far ahead were all the other major players by the time the company jumped on board. Along with amassing incredible Facebook, YouTube and Twitter audiences thanks to relentless promotion on television, the company even invested financially in busted flush Tout - driving wrestlers and audiences alike to the 15-second video sharer in vain hope that it would become the revolutionary platform for sharing on-message content going forward.
It didn't take, forcing the organisation to double down on updates of anytime anyone or anything was trending on Twitter - ideally as the 'Worldwide Number One' item - despite their own misunderstanding of what that actually even meant.
March 19th's Monday Night Raw concluded as normal just after 11/10c in the United States, but the worldwide response to #UltimateDELETION was such that it was still one of Twitter's hottest topics over seven hours later. Millions of viewers elsewhere in the world are still discovering Matt Hardy's latest maniacal smorgasbord, waking up to Bray Wyatt's plunge to the bottom of the Lake Of Reincarnation, or eating their lunch to Hardy's dramatic drive on the Mower Of Lawn.
In the elder Hardy brother, WWE own a performer now categorically proven to have all the 'Broken Brilliance' required to draw interest in the most unlikely of ways. He did it for a stone dead TNA/Impact Wrestling product throughout his genre-defining 2016/17 run, and is now recreating it on a red hot Road To WrestleMania.
#UltimateDELETION will likely already be considered a mammoth success for the company as the post-mortem determines potential further interest, but how did it compare creatively with various similar efforts at 'compounds' between both companies over the last two years? (CONT...)