7 Ups & 5 Downs From WWE Raw (Oct 10)

2. Not Exactly A Blow-Away Blowoff Match

Johnny Gargano Austin Theory
WWE.com

Ever since returning to WWE in August, Johnny Gargano has been hounded by his former protégé Austin Theory, who has maintained nonstop that the student has exceeded the teacher.

The two went back and forth for weeks tormenting the other, and interfering in each other’s matches, and it finally came to a head Monday night on Raw’s season premiere.

But when the bell rang… it was just a match. Don’t get it wrong, the match itself was fine, with both men looking fairly crisp en route to Gargano nailing One Final Beat to put Theory down. However, this wasn’t the culmination of a feud between former stablemates, or at least it didn’t feel like one. It felt like two guys just trying to move up the ladder.

Sure, Theory swiped Johnny’s Gargano Escape submission hold, but it barely registered with fans. After Johnny Wrestling put Austin away, there was no feeling that he had defeated an arch-rival or gained some cathartic win. It was just another day at the office.

Let’s hope then that this is it for this feud because nothing here indicated a need or desire to run it back. And let’s hope better things are on the horizon for both men.

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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.