5 Ups & 8 Downs From WWE Raw (Dec 20)

4. Cramming In Good Stuff

Randy Orton Chad Gable
WWE.com

If you’re going to book a short match that serves more as angle advancement, there are ways to do it without making people look dumb.

Chad Gable looked like a goof last week eating an RKO in his hometown out of nowhere. This week, he faced Randy Orton in a singles match where he inevitably would take another RKO for the loss.

However, Gable actually controlled the vast majority of the match, tossing Orton around with arm drags left and right, and avoiding a Draping DDT. He had Randy a bit off, and it took the veteran suckering Gable into going for an arm drag, evading it and hitting an RKO to pick up the win. That wasn’t an Orton squash – it was Randy getting outwrestled and finally outsmarting his opponent.

The stuff with Otis afterwards was entertaining as well, as positioning him as unable to be RKO’d makes for an interesting little angle, and possibly an intriguing match next week.

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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.