4 Ups & 9 Downs From WWE Raw (Feb 15)

Downs…

9. Too Little, Too Late

As always, we remain open to being convinced otherwise, but Monday’s tease of a returning Fiend did not exactly set the world on fire.

Weeks of cartoonishly bad segments between Randy Orton and Alexa Bliss during the past two months have ruined whatever goodwill could have been extended to this angle, rendering it ineffective.

Think about it: We’ve endured Randy burning the Fiend alive, threatening to burn Bliss, Bliss shooting a fireball at Orton and “burning” his face, and Orton RKO’ing Alexa to cost her the Raw Women’s Championship (a title this feud helped neuter during the past month). And on Monday, Alexa was sitting inside a pentagram pledging that the Fiend would be reborn – you know, after Orton committed homicide and burned him alive in the middle of the ring.

This could have been redeemed at some point (probably before Orton torched his opponent), but now it’s just a horror movie on its seventh sequel, with the franchise limping toward its conclusion. Maybe, just maybe, it’ll have a resurgence, but no one should count on it.