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

2. Where’s Poochie?

Baron Corbin
WWE.com

During the past couple months, we’ve seen one figure get an increasing amount of camera time. Unfortunately, it’s not a megastar being groomed for greatness.

It’s Baron Corbin.

You can make the argument that the fact that marking heel Corbin’s omnipresence on Raw as a “down” is playing into WWE’s hands (see? You dislike the heel!), but that ignores the shrinking ratings and poor reception his segments regularly receive. Corbin was in the opening segment and the main event. Along the way, he was in at least two backstage segments and came up in conversation almost every two minutes among the announcers.

There’s no perfect solution to this, and Corbin could be out of a “job” after TLC if Braun Strowman returns to defeat him, so this might all be moot. But it’s typical WWE: Corbin started to hit his stride as a heel, so rather than letting him get heat naturally, the writers shoved him down fans’ throats to the point where the heat is now “go away” heat, not “boo, you stink” heat.

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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.