6 Ups & 6 Downs From WWE Raw (Nov 23)

5. Rollups, Count-Outs And DQs, Oh My!

Let’s quickly review the finishes of the matches on Raw on Monday night: Count-out, sunset flip pin, rollup, DQ, rollup, DQ, Sister Abigail, Phenomenal Forearm after mega-Fiend distraction.

That’s eight finishes, and only one was a clean finish via a finishing move. Six involved rollup-style pins, DQs and count-outs. That’s just an insane ratio, even on a show where they’re trying to protect as many wrestlers as possible.

Rollups and DQs will happen. It shows that a wrestler can win with something other than a Spanish Fly off the top turnbuckle through a double table stack on the floor. (Although that would probably get a near-fall because it’s not an established finisher.) But when you have three of those finishes on one episode, along with two DQs and a distraction finish? It just shows a lack of creativity and overprotects the roster to the point where no one really can advance.

This isn’t a call for clean finishes in every match, even if it means burying talent. But someone should be looking at the booking and realizing that they’re going heavy on weak finishes and do something about it before going to air.