3 Ups & 11 Downs From WWE Raw (Jan 18)

8. Original Goof, Not Bro

Matt Riddle
WWE.com

You ever get the feeling Vince McMahon saw a movie or two that influenced his thinking for TV? That’s got to be the case when it comes to Riddle.

It seems like Vince finally saw Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, and decided that Riddle is a cross between Spicoli, Bill and Ted. Whereas Riddle was a bro in NXT who was ultra-competitive and could still cut a solid promo, he’s now a goof who lost to Bobby Lashley in 2 minutes last week, then got punked by Lashley and MVP, but shows up on Monday joking around and complimenting the Hurt Business on their threads.

It’s just insanely ridiculous how WWE takes a fully-formed character from NXT and manages to ruin it by over-simplifying it or dumbing it down to the lowest common denominator. In Riddle’s case, that means having him always laid-back, not caring about anything, negative consequences just roll off him, and he acts like an 80s-era stoner, not a 2010s bro.

But hey, we’re not the geniuses with a multi-million-dollar wrestling company.

Advertisement
In this post: 
WWE Raw
 
First Posted On: 
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.