7 Ups And 6 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Jan 16)

5. An Obvious Dusty Finish

dusty finish
WWE.com

If you didn’t see the end of the Raw Tag Team Championship match coming a mile away, then you must be new to watching professional wrestling.

Cesaro and Sheamus defended the tag titles against Luke Gallows & Karl Anderson. The Club has been trying to employ a “divide and conquer” strategy, sowing seeds of doubt between the two former rivals, but it hasn’t taken hold. Monday, Sheamus accidentally leveled the referee during the course of the match. Gallows & Anderson then hit the Magic Killer on Cesaro and a second ref counted the three count.

However, ref John Cone recovered and threw the match out as a DQ win for the Club because of Sheamus’ attack.

There are plenty of people (this writer included) who think Dusty Finishes are crutches that writers can fall back on too often, but WWE should get a pass here. The finish allowed Gallows & Anderson to look strong (hitting their finisher on both champs) and have reason to demand a rematch.

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.