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

4. Turn, Turn, Turn

dean ambrose
WWE.com

This is a difficult thing to mark as a “down” when so many of the recent turns have been successfully executed, but we have to note that the sheer volume of character turns has been ridiculous in recent weeks.

This month alone, we’ve seen the following wrestlers either turn or strongly hint at a turn: Bobby Lashley, Kevin Owens, Nikki and Brie Bella, Elias, and Dean Ambrose. That doesn’t include trying to figure out whether Dana Brooke is a heel or face. That’s a pretty sizable number in just three weeks. In fact, it’s almost at the pace you’d expect if Vince Russo was booking again.

There’s nothing wrong if a heel or face turn is planned out and helps a wrestler connect better with the audience, but when you have a bunch in a short span of time, it dilutes things and makes you wonder if the turns are being done solely for shock value rather than logical storytelling.

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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.