4 Ups & 11 Downs From WWE Raw (Jan 11)

10. B*lls

Randy Orton Triple H WWE Raw
WWE.com

There was a time when this writer thought it was edgy for a wrestler to tell his opponent he didn’t have any b***s. It was new, unheard of, and something you just didn’t hear on TV.

It was also 1998.

Fast-forward 22 years, and questioning someone’s manhood as a means to get someone to do something they might not want to isn’t just overplayed – it’s WWE’s absolute go-to trope for an insult. (Didn’t someone just use that very same insult on Miz a couple of weeks ago?) Nevertheless, here was Randy Orton, dusting it off on Monday night to egg Triple H on, complete with intimating that Hunter’s wife Stephanie McMahon had his genitals in her purse.

Oooh, sick burn! Never heard that one before… this year. Maybe we’ll go all the way around and hit “mom jokes” next.

But seriously, it’s lame, it’s unoriginal, and it’s poor storytelling. In fact, it isn’t storytelling at all. It’s just a lazy writer crutch.

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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.