4 Ups And 8 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Aug 28)

5. Southpaw Comes To Raw

heath slater elias samson
WWE.com

Uggh. You knew if the WWE brass saw the Southpaw Regional Wrestling skits that they’d find a way to screw things up – and they did.

In a ridiculous fourth-wall-crashing moment, Jerry Lawler wanted to defend the honor of Memphis against Elias by bringing out Pelvis Wesley – Heath Slater’s character from the popular Southpaw YouTube videos. And sure enough, Slater came out and did his shtick as Wesley, only to get laid out by Elias.

So let’s break that down: A wrestler pretends to be another character in a video series that exists in another “universe” separate of WWE, and then that character comes to Raw, with everyone acting like it’s a different guy. Imagine if Lance Catamaran came out to do commentary and Michael Cole ignored the fact that it was John Cena.

To quote Randy Orton, “Stupid, stupid, stupid!”

Southpaw is popular because it’s distinctly different and most certainly not WWE. So of course the writers bring it to life in the WWE lexicon as a big joke. Bravo, jerks.

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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.