6 Ups And 8 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (May 28)

7. If You Can’t Say Something Nice…

seth rollins
WWE.com

As a fan of sports like baseball and (American) football, this writer appreciates when WWE tries to give wrestling a rub of authenticity by citing statistics and other facts from the past.

But WWE also has the unpleasant task of scrubbing certain performers from its history, leaving gaps in those stats and facts. We hear it every time they talk about the Royal Rumble and how only two men have entered at #1 and won, and one of them is Shawn Michaels.

We got another of those moments Monday when Michael Cole was compelled to tell us that the Intercontinental Championship had only changed hands in Richmond, Va. once before, with Chris Jericho winning it in 2000.

A quick trip to any wrestling history website quickly revealed the obvious question: Who did Jericho beat for the IC title? And the answer (as if it wasn’t obvious): Chris Benoit.

Yes, we know why WWE doesn’t mention Benoit ever on the air. That’s not the gripe. The point is that you had to know by putting all the info out there, fans would go and check that or at the very least be curious about it and cruise around social media to see if anyone posted the answer.

If you don’t want to mention Benoit, don’t dance around his historical moments. Just give some bland point and move on.

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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.