5 Ups & 4 Downs From WWE Raw (30 Dec - Results & Review)

1. Insider References Galore

Seth Rollins and CM Punk
WWE

There are always two minds when it comes to a wrestling promo that relies on a ton of insider references to generate heat.

On one hand, it rarely fails to elicit huge reactions from fans in the know and spark a lot of online discourse. However, it also is a navel-gazing crutch that requires fans to break out a character bible to understand everything. If you’re using these references sparingly, that’s one thing, but if it’s a firehose of comments, you’ve gone too far.

Monday’s show-closing confrontation between Seth Rollins and CM Punk was a nonstop barrage of callbacks and veiled comments, with Punk obliquely referring to Vince McMahon as he called out Rollins’ use of “took his ball and went home” and remarked that he loved WWE but hated the guy running the company when he left 10 years ago. Seth dropped references to Colt Cabana and AEW in trashing Punk, while Punk used arrows as an analogy throughout his verbal comeback.

Fans who love this sort of thing were clearly enjoying it, but it also wasn’t necessary to sell the match. The feud already was red-hot heading into next week – all they needed to do was land the plane Monday night. They succeeded, but this was an excessive amount of insider crap for the sake of it.

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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.