3 Ups & 7 Downs From WWE Raw (Oct 26)

Orton brawls with McIntyre again, RETRIBUTION loses, more guitar shots.

Alexa Bliss Bray Wyatt
WWE.com

If you were looking for Raw to turn a corner after a dismal showing at Hell in a Cell on Monday night, you were sadly disappointed.

Raw was able to give us a couple of good matches, but the storylines continue to flounder, and now we’re spiralling toward Survivor Series, when intra-brand angles take a backseat to the inevitable “Raw hates SmackDown” and “brand supremacy” stuff we get ever autumn. So instead of Asuka focusing on her next challenger, she’ll be squaring off against Sasha Banks. New Day won’t be working on rebuilding the tag division, they’ll be trading jokes with Street Profits.

Monday night, RETRIBUTION’s burial continued, with the group losing an elimination match that apparently didn’t even warrant holding off until the damn PPV dedicated to elimination matches. Randy Orton’s big title win Sunday night resulted in him giving three short, meaningless promos (two backstage, one on A Moment of Bliss) and brawling with… Drew McIntyre again.

New main roster stars Keith Lee and Matt Riddle continue to be booked like goofs. The Miz, fresh off winning a match that ensures him of an 80% chance of becoming a world champion again, got treated like a jobber-to-the-stars. And WWE channelled its inner 2000 WCW and produced two guitar shots in the span of 45 minutes. Just another day at the office.

With that said, let’s get to it…

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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.