6 Ups And 4 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Nov 6)

3. Bait-And-Switch

samoa joe finn balor
WWE.com

A lot of times when you hear that term, you think it means you got hosed.

Promised a classic bout between two stars? Oops, here’s some oaf to substitute in at the last minute, sorry. Told there will be a title match in the main event? Just wait for the screwjob finish (a WCW staple).

But take a match between Samoa Joe and Titus O’Neil and throw it out the window when Joe attacks Titus and Apollo Crews on the ramp, and then replace it with Joe versus Finn Balor? Now that is the kind of bait-and-switch fans can go for. Joe and Finn had their usual solid match, with the announcers referencing their NXT history, and they continuously countered each other’s big moves, leading to the inevitable double countout.

While that’s certainly a disappointing finish, the match itself was several times better than anything we would have gotten with Titus, and it reminds us that there still are some good matchups we haven’t really seen on Raw yet.

Advertisement
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.