6 Ups & 5 Downs From WWE Raw (April 25)

4. Choo Choo!

The Usos
WWE.com

Even a celebratory event for WWE’s longest-tenured wrestler on the roster can’t avoid the company’s favorite tropes, as Randy Orton’s 20th anniversary devolved into a promo train to set up the main event.

Seriously, just go re-read that sentence. Raw opened with a celebration of Orton’s career and turned into a series of interruptions that led to Adam Pearce making an eight-man tag match for the main event, because apparently nothing else was booked for the show.

You had Cody Rhodes come out for a special congratulations, but he was cut off by Seth Rollins, who was cut off by Ezekiel, who was interrupted by Kevin Owens, who was followed up by the Usos. That’s four interruptions if you’re keeping count. And all of that was to set up the eight-man main event that didn’t exist because apparently, Pearce didn’t do his job before the show went on the air.

Thinking about this stuff and the contrived nature of the match-making makes your head hurt, so just understand it’s there, it’s garbage, mark it as a “down” and move on.

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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.