7 Ups And 6 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Oct 22)

1. Dad-Bod Velasquez ‘Pummels’ Shelton

cain velasquez shelton benjamin
WWE.com

Thank God Crown Jewel is by now a well-known joke of a WWE show. Sure, the company might promote is as “as big as WrestleMania,” but those of us in the know understand that they just mean in terms of payday, not wrestling quality of significance.

And that’s important when you consider how hard WWE is pushing this story: Cain Velasquez beat Brock Lesnar nine years ago in UFC, and now he’s come to WWE to defend Rey Mysterio… and take another title from Brock. On the surface, that doesn’t sound that bad… until you see it in practice.

Cain has been, how should we say, less than impressive. And Monday night, he looked completely unimpressive trying to manhandle Lesnar’s college roommate Shelton Benjamin. Velasquez hit some weak-looking worked punches and applied a sleeper for about three seconds before Shelton tapped, ending the “beatdown” segment.

Honestly, Benjamin might have been speaking for all of us when he decried how Cain bailed out Rey and now gets a WWE Championship shot. Maybe Velasquez will surprise us and put on a good match, but this build hasn’t been good at all.

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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.