5 Ups & 4 Downs From WWE Raw (Oct 24)

3. Riddle’s An Idiot Again

Matt Riddle Elias
WWE.com

When the new regime took over, one of the immediate beneficiaries was Matt Riddle, who regained his first name and almost immediately started to be treated like a serious competitor instead of a goofy stoner.

Things went so well during August and September that you started to think that maybe Riddle was being positioned as a top-level face, someone who could contend for a top title.

Then the last two weeks happened, and Riddle is once again making bad stoner jokes (“bongos” sounds like “bong,” so let’s have him confuse the two!) and annoying people backstage, with Elias being the current target.

It’s not as big of a panic moment because the new regime has proved they can book Riddle properly, so maybe this is a temporary diversion to establish the Elias/Riddle dynamic. But do you really need to treat the Original Bro like an idiot to do that? It’s like a bad habit coming back and needing to be pushed down again.

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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.