3 Ups And 8 Downs From WWE Raw (Dec 21)

7. Legends Make Everything Better, Right?

Ric Flair Hulk Hogan
WWE.com

There was a time when Old School Raw and other throwback episodes were welcome distractions from the normal grind of the show. We got to see long-forgotten wrestlers and got a healthy dose of nostalgia for one night.

But now that WWE has been all about navel-gazing in recent years, trotting many of the same legends out numerous times a year, it’s lost its impact. And if the upcoming Legends Raw is supposed to help fix the show’s disastrous ratings, then the company has another thing coming.

This is nothing against Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, Kurt Angle, Torrie Wilson, Sgt. Slaughter and others, but trotting these superstars out to the ThunderDome isn’t going to spark something here. Hell, we just saw Flair Sunday night at TLC.

Sure, maybe it’ll be entertaining in a few spots, but WWE is in this tailspin in part because of its reliance on part-timers, old-timers and long-established wrestlers, while newer superstars struggle to catch traction amidst poor booking, horrific writing and questionable decision-making.

But hey, in two weeks, Hogan, Flair and Angle will remind us that this company didn’t always suck so badly.

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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.