8 Ups And 6 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Oct 31)

4. Battle Royal Of Nobodies

braun strowman battle royal
WWE.com

So let’s get this straight: Mick Foley and Stephanie McMahon are worried about competing with SmackDown at Survivor Series and want to put the company’s best foot forward in each match, so they announce a battle royal for a spot on Team Raw for the big mach. This battle royal includes luminaries such as Curtis Axel, Jinder Mahal, Bo Dallas, Neville, Darren Young, the Golden Truth, Sami Zayn and Braun Strowman.

What would Foley and Steph done if R-Truth managed hide under the ring until the end, sneak in and eliminate the last person? Wouldn’t they be beside themselves? Shouldn’t they simply cherry-pick the wrestlers they really want? Instead, we got a battle royal with a lot of lower-card talent and guys like Zayn, Strowman, Cesaro and Sheamus, all of whom were in the final five. So what was the point?

OK, there’s a simple answer: Give Brown Strowman something to do rather than beat up jobbers and let him knock off some lesser WWE talent. But it just feels like a silly tactic to use a battle royal like this.

Advertisement
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.