6 Ups & 8 Downs From WWE Raw (Sep 20)

3. Master’s Class

Randy Orton AJ Styles
WWE.com

Riddle deserves a medal for making Randy Orton relevant and a fan favorite in 2021. Let’s just get that out of the way first.

But Orton and AJ Styles had a solid bout between two former world champions who are currently competing in the tag division. They went back and forth, countering each other’s big moves, right up to when AJ went for a Phenomenal Forearm and Orton went to counter with an RKO, but both men faked the other out. Seconds later, Orton caught Styles for real with an RKO for the win.

The match was a nice one that furthered the rivalry between AJ/Omos and RK-Bro, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing at all since they’re probably the two biggest teams in the division right now.

And there was a nice subtle bit at the end when Orton was celebrating and gestured to Riddle that he heard him warning him about the Phenomenal Forearm. It’s the kind of development we just don’t get that often.

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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.