4 Ups & 7 Downs From WWE Raw (Results & Review - 23 Oct)

3. Stilted And Forced

Rhea Ripley Seth Rollins
WWE

Rhea Ripley has been a nearly unstoppable force on Raw with a presence that is impossible to fake.

That’s why her backstage conversation with Seth Rollins Monday night was so disappointing. She might as well have been reading cue cards just to the right of the camera as they “bantered” back and forth about whether Rollins should accept help from the Judgment Day to hold onto his World Heavyweight Championship.

The game here is Ripley stirring the pot by playing both sides in the Rollins/Drew McIntyre feud, but this encounter came off as extremely fake, forced and scripted. When Rhea, who has had an uber-cool heel vibe going for the past year now, looks like a deer in the headlights running lines, you know you screwed up with this segment.

Fortunately, it’s likely a one-week blip and Ripley will be back to her usual awesome ways next week. But this still needs to be called out as a big disappointment.

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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.