5 Ups & 3 Downs From WWE Fastlane 2023 (Results & Review)

3. That Was Cool

WWE Fastlane 2023 LWO Santos Escobar Zelina Vega Rey Mysterio Carlito
WWE.com

It only took five months for WWE to figure out what to do with Carlito, but they definitely delivered smartly Saturday night.

With Jaoquin Wilde and Cruz Del Toro taken out on SmackDown Friday night, Rey Mysterio said he’d place a call for backup. A fair amount of the chatter was that Dragon Lee would answer the call, but once it was revealed that the person Rey called didn’t answer, it ruled out Lee, who also was on SmackDown.

Enter, Carlito.

The late arrival in tag matches is a rarely used trope that can seem really hackneyed and forced, but when you’re talking about a literal last-minute substitute and the guy answering the call lives a plane ride away, it’s not out of the realm for him to arrive at the arena mid-match and rush to the ring.

Carlito looked great in his return and picked up the quick win for his team, putting him on the map from the jump. The question now will be how he fits into the LWO and how that impacts the group dynamic.

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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.