5 Ups And 9 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Dec 10)

7. Life Imitates Art

Seth Rollins
WWE.com

Breaking the Fourth Wall in acting can be a really great tool if done properly. But when it’s done incorrectly, it can be disastrous.

In WWE, breaking the Fourth Wall is a little trickier, because we’re almost always stepping through the looking glass. Whether it’s breaking kayfabe or delivering worked shoot promos, we see this stuff regularly.

However, referring to sagging, abysmal Raw TV ratings as part of a storyline? That smacks of desperation. It’s a weird, arbitrary line, but Seth Rollins referencing Raw’s “all-time low” ratings on Monday night was a bit much. Maybe Stephanie McMahon stepping out of character to address it would be one thing, but using it as part of the promo felt like something that should never come to pass.

We’ll see later on that this wasn’t all a bad thing, but this one aspect needed to be called out here.

Advertisement
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.