3 Ups & 7 Downs From WWE Raw (31 Oct)

5. The Geekening Of Mustafa Ali

WWE stop booking smaller babyfaces to have sh*te patter and generally behave in a cocky and unlikeable fashion challenge (impossible).

Mustafa Ali and Johnny Gargano are at this point playing the same, dreadful character: Zack Morris wearing kick pads. As far as stupidly broad WWE "comedy" goes, The Miz did a decent, massively over-the-top job of selling Roman Reigns' Superman punch by icing his face and acting as if his jaw had been dislocated. In another continuation of the low-key weirdest story WWE tells, Miz, who always takes the chicken sh*t heel thing to an absurd extreme, used the assault in an attempt to get out of his match with Mustafa Ali.

It didn't work; Ali goaded Miz into it by saying "Everything is bigger in Texas - well, maybe not everything..."

He was insinuating that Miz has tiny balls, and then said the quiet part loud with a tragic three camera sitcom delivery. His match with the Miz later in the evening wasn't shabby at all. The fans were getting into it towards the finish. The issue however is that Dexter Lumis interfered at the finish, Ali capitalised on the distraction, and then celebrated as if he'd just won the big one at WrestleMania.

WWE - despite some earnestly great stuff on SmackDown involving the Brawling Brutes, Imperium and the Bloodline - is bad enough in and of itself. It gets worse when you use your imagination and wonder what could be. Ali could be a valuable earnest babyface, but instead, his character is another smug unfunny geek celebrating tiny, insignificant victories.