8 Ups And 4 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (July 20)

4. What It Needed To Be

Randy Orton Big Show Raw
WWE.com

No one was going to mistake Big Show versus Randy Orton for the Greatest Wrestling Match Ever, but no one was expecting it to be that either.

Orton and Show squared off in an unsanctioned match Monday night, as Randy’s revitalized Legend Killer gimmick continued to steam ahead. Worse, Orton’s targets since WrestleMania have been friends of his, a fact that has been played up as part of the angle. It’s as if Orton is trying to erase parts of his past from existence by punting them into oblivion.

Monday’s match was slow and plodding, which is Show’s pace these days, and for being unsanctioned, it really wasn’t all that brutal: a table got broken and Orton wore out a steel chair on Show’s back before hitting an RKO for the win, then punting the giant afterward.

But it was the angle that mattered, and slowly, Orton is building himself back up as the Legend Killer, taking out a new generation of WWE legends. The question is, who’s next?

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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.