4 Ups & 8 Downs From WWE Raw (Sep 29)

1. Ruining A Great Entrance And Character

Aleister Black
WWE

A great entrance can provide a ton of mileage to a wrestler. Just think of all the immortal themes and entrances and how they set the tone for fans as a superstar enters the arena.

Well, Raw seems to be on a tear when it comes to completely screwing up the incredible, memorable entrances some of its wrestlers have. We saw them completely bastardize Keith Lee’s intro, making it so bad that they had to try to reign it in a bit in week two, but still have failed.

Monday, we saw Aleister Black, a man who easily had the most unique entrance in WWE, forgo his usual rising out of the mist, calmly walking to the ring and slingshot into a seated crisscross. Instead, he saw him aggressively stalk to the ring and pace angrily along the apron before getting in the ring and sitting down.

Black’s entrance and music (his cool theme has been replaced with an angrier nu-metal song) weren’t the only things that changed. His calm and cool demeanour were replaced with an angry, aggressive persona. And then he got DQ’d for accidentally striking a referee, and then he got Stunnered by Kevin Owens when his back was turned.

So in one fell swoop, WWE took everything that was cool and unique about Aleister and turned him into a one-eyed, raging loser with a crappy entrance.

Eat it, WWE.

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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.