8 Ups And 6 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Dec 5)

5. Cruiserweights Show Character

daivari jack gallagher
WWE.com

It’s about time that the cruiserweights found a way to connect with the crowd and do more than just shake hands and have a decent-to-good match.

Pairing Jack Gallagher and Ariya Daivari was a great way to allow fans to pick sides and actually get invested. It helped that Gallagher’s antics – a twisting reversal of an arm-wringer and a handstand to escape from a headlock – won the fans’ approval. The Austin, Texas crowd certainly seemed into the Extraordinary Gentleman’s routine and cheered for him, which made what happened next even better.

After winning, Gallagher offered a handshake to Daivari, who took it… and then promptly assaulted Jack’s knee, drawing pretty big boos from the crowd. It was simple, but it also was fairly effective. A criticism of the cruiserweight division has been that fans can’t really distinguish between the wrestlers as characters, and this one match gave fans two characters to react to.

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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.