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

Ups...

8. Undoing A Mistake

brian kendrick raw
WWE.com

Sunday night, Brian Kendrick made Cruiserweight Champion TJ Perkins look like a goof by feigning a knee injury, drawing him in and then defeating the champ. Perkins got suckered into checking on his friend and lost his title, which is a common WWE tactic for booking babyfaces: they’re gullible idiots.

But Monday, they worked to undo some of that, with Kendrick cutting a promo about how he played mind games with asking TJP to let him win the title and wanted to tug on his heartstrings and then pounce. Kendrick turned the focus to his deception, not Perkins’ foolishness. It helped that TJ immediately jumped Kendrick and pummeled him, before the former Spanky took a walk and got counted out in their Cruiserweight Championship rematch (more mind games, so to speak).

This feud looked interesting to start, waned a little, and hopefully bottomed out at Hell in a Cell. If Perkins being duped is used to build him up to a tougher, more focused and serious competitor, then that’s OK, but it’s ridiculous that WWE feels they have to make a wrestler look like a moron to then build him up. Still, this was an improvement.

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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.