5 Ups And 7 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (May 8)

3. Poor Man’s Rey Mysterio

braun strowman kalisto
WWE.com

Anyone who watched WCW back in the day might remember the storyline of Rey Mysterio as a giant-killer, defeating the likes of Kevin Nash, Scott Norton and other bigger men. It was a fun gimmick of a cruiserweight toppling larger opponents.

Mysterio built a career in WWE around that, fighting and often beating men who outweighed him by 100-150 pounds. It’s a storyline WWE hasn’t really duplicated with a masked luchador, but they seem bent on trying something different with another masked man.

Recently, Kalisto has been embroiled in a “feud” with Braun Strowman, where the monster has dumped the luchador into a Dumpster, lost a Dumpster match to him, and then beat him to a pulp and pushed him off the stage while in a Dumpster. (That’s a lot of Dumpster-related activity.)

Monday, Kalisto demanded a match with Strowman to show him that he wasn’t garbage. Braun decimated him for the 30 seconds the match lasted, then disappeared when Roman Reigns showed up. Yeah, that’s exactly how Mysterio got over with fans: get beaten up every week and forgotten in the ring after interference.

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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.