6 Ups & 4 Downs From WWE Raw (Nov 14)

Downs…

4. At Least The Excuse Made Some Sense

Austin Theory’s failed Money in the Bank cash-in for the United States Championship last week was easily one of the dumbest, worst moments of the year for several reasons. But Monday night, they at least tried to retcon some of the stupidity away with a semi-logical point.

Theory did a backstage interview where he started out by pointing out how difficult it is to have so much pressure put on you as a handpicked successor, protégé, and guy who gets endless opportunities. It was pretty boilerplate stuff to that point.

But then Austin noted that the MITB briefcase was an anchor around his neck as long as both world titles were around Roman Reigns’ waist. He pointed out that Reigns has been champion and undefeated for more than two years, with everyone else failing against him. Theory observed that every time he tried to cash in against Roman, either the Bloodline or some other force blocked him.

The bottom line for Theory was that as long as Roman had the title, he was never going to sniff a world title. The logic ended when you remember that Theory had until next July to cash in, and all he had to do was hold onto the case and wait.

However, we’ll give this a very tepid “down” for two reasons: the “logic” only needs to make sense to Theory as the heel, and because WWE followed this up immediately with a very strong showing for Austin, as we’ll note later. But the stupidity of last week can’t be explained away in one promo.