6 Ups And 6 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (March 11)

5. Shelton Surfaces

shelton benjamin
WWE.com

It only took 17 years for WWE to play up the relationship between Brock Lesnar and Shelton Benjamin and align them together.

Benjamin was Lesnar’s wrestling coach at the University of Minnesota, and the duo teamed together in OVW as the Minnesota Stretching Crew. On the main roster, Shelton was teamed with Charlie Haas as Team Angle, while Lesnar went on to become the then-youngest WWE Champion in company history.

But Monday night, Benjamin reappeared from obscurity (also known as the SmackDown house show circuit) to attack Seth Rollins during a promo battle with Paul Heyman. The beatdown led to an impromptu match between the two, which Rollins won after a competitive contest. Heyman acknowledged during the match that he paid Shelton off to jump Seth.

Considering his only televised match in the past five months was the Royal Rumble, seeing Shelton on TV again – and used in a way that has historic significance – merits an “up” here.

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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.