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

1. ‘I Enjoy Firing People’

What a classless, tasteless and clueless comment from Vince McMahon… and also a shoot comment that wasn’t supposed to be a shoot comment.

Vince was trying to get at Austin Theory, and instead, he basically said the quiet part out loud. And yeah, maybe that’s the point: make himself even more of the heel authority figure. But a lot of fans have had less and less tolerance for WWE’s style of management, discarding 80+ wrestlers this year alone while posting record revenues. So when they hear that sort of comment, it doesn’t ring of “Oh, what a heel statement,” it’s “Wow, they really are clueless SOBs in WWE.”

Cripes, Theory came up to the main roster the first time in a stable with Zelina Vega and Andrade, both of whom were released last year. Several of his colleagues in NXT were released this summer and fall.

It derailed the entire segment – which in itself was insanely difficult to hear, not because of crowd reaction, but because Vince can barely enunciate his promo. He sounded garbled, like a drunkard with a mouthful of marbles.

Bad, bad, bad.

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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.