7 Ups & 6 Downs From WWE Raw (Oct 25)

4. Successful Tag Title Defense

Matt Riddle
WWE.com

We took our swipe at the Dirty Dawgs’ booking earlier, but let’s give credit to WWE for giving RK-Bro a successful tag title defense right off the bat.

You could argue that they burned through a potential rivalry here, but RK-Bro was hot at Crown Jewel, and that definitely carried over here, with fans chanting (yes, chanting!) for Randy Orton. The old adage of striking while the iron is hot carries here, so having the champs defend made good sense.

What was nice about this match was that it varied from previous bouts, with Orton playing face in peril for a bit and then Riddle running wild at the end and picking up the win himself without an assist from Randy. Several of their bouts have seen Orton either pick up the win or contribute strongly to the victory.

Sure, RK-Bro has cooled off since the summer, but these last two title matches have shown that if WWE actually cared to book their tag division intelligently, they could have strong co-main events with these guys.

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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.