7 Ups And 6 Downs From WWE Raw (Jan 13)

4. Is This Feud Working?

Randy Orton Drew McIntyre
WWE.com

Serious question: Are you buying into the Randy Orton/AJ Styles feud?

Orton played Styles by faking a knee injury – nice. Styles mocked Orton in a match last week, hitting an RKO to win – meh. Then this week, they verbally sparred, then traded finisher attempts, trying to hit each other’s finisher on the other, with Orton nailing a Styles Clash.

And then Drew McIntyre got the pin to win the triple threat match.

Yes, they’re seemingly going for a story of two top-level guys just sparring over who’s the greatest, which can sometimes be a fun and compelling angle, but it’s just not clicking for yours truly. Not in the way that it feels like a rivalry between two former multi-time world champions should be going.

This opinion could change quickly, but it just didn’t feel great this week.

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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.