8 Ups And 6 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (August 1)

by Scott Carlson

1. From Outta Nowhere!

RKO Randy Orton Lesnar Raw
WWE.com

The moment that Paul Heyman started railing about how Randy Orton wasn’t man enough to hit an RKO on Brock Lesnar, that he would never be able to do it, you had to know that the Viper was going to strike. And sure enough, he did.

Orton, a SmackDown superstar, “invaded” Raw to drop Lesnar with an RKO, then fled through the crowd, much to the fans’ delight. That simple move actually did more to boost Orton’s popularity, as he’s been either booed or treated with apathy at times in the past, and was wildly cheered Monday night.

The RKO also raised the concern (for Lesnar fans) that the Beast could be susceptible to Orton. If Randy can land one or two of them and get a pinfall, he might be able to hold Brock down for a three count. (For the record, Lesnar was stirring a few short seconds after the RKO.)

This could be a sleeper match, as fans might not have been expecting much before with this bout, but it seems to be picking up steam weekly. It could be a fun match between two main eventers who came up through developmental together 14 years ago.

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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.