5 Ups And 5 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Feb 12)

3. Submission, Or Resthold?

john cena the miz
WWE.com

It’s safe to say that no one really expects anyone to win a match via sleeper hold these days, but that doesn’t mean that the moment it’s applied is a great time for a commercial break.

And yet, that’s exactly what happened Monday, as Raw went to break as Miz wore John Cena down with a sleeper. Michael Cole just calmly asked if Cena could get back into the match by the time they got back from break, and that was that. Boom, commercial. No question of whether he could pass out during the break, or old-school Gorilla Monsoon “the tapes are rolling” comment.

Just because no one expects a wrestler to win with a sleeper doesn’t mean you treat it like the equivalent of the heel taking a powder or a chinlock. If you want fans to actually buy the hold as something, then you need to treat it as such. Otherwise, they’ll just tune out and wait for the comeback to get excited.

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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.