4 Ups & 8 Downs From WWE Raw (April 26)

5. Telegraphing It Doesn’t Make It Better

Randy Orton Riddle
WWE.com

Just because Corey Graves all but announced that Randy Orton would be turning on Riddle at some point doesn’t make everything all better.

In fact, Graves’ warning simply made Riddle look even more like an idiot for buying into Orton’s offering for the two to form a tag team, RK-Bro. Orton has spent the past year being a despicable heel. He hasn’t been a tweener or a loner or a character with any redeemable qualities. It’s obvious to anyone watching Raw (except Riddle apparently) that Randy is playing the Original Bro and is going to viciously turn on him.

But Riddle is such an idiot that he’s walking into this trap with arms wide open. And when Orton turns on and RKOs Riddle, are we supposed to feel sympathy for him, especially after Graves told us this was going to happen? Maybe if Orton had been trending more like a face for a while and softened up, or if they teamed up for a while. But Riddle isn’t even doing this with a goal of winning tag titles. It’s just a “cool” tag team name and Riddle’s brain is small.

All of this leads to an angle no one is going to care about. No one is going to feel bad for Riddle when he gets jumped. If anything, people will probably like Orton a bit more for putting the dope in his place.

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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.