8 Ups And 6 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Dec 17)

5. Debuting Faces

wwe debuts
WWE.com

One criticism that often can accompany the many WWE debuts for NXT superstars is that the majority of casual fans know very little or nothing about them.

Think of The Revival, who debuted with a bang on the Raw After WrestleMania, but there was nary a vignette explaining who they are and what they stand for, save the announcers calling them “throwbacks.” It leads to fan apathy and can deflate a debut quickly.

So it was refreshing to see WWE announce six of their newest callups and give them short video packages: Lars Sullivan, EC3, Lacey Evans, Nikki Cross and Heavy Machinery. They didn’t name which brand gets which superstar, but it’s safe to assume the women split (hoping Cross lands with her old Sanity mates on SmackDown).

The videos weren’t terribly involved, but they were more than most debuting superstars get, and hopefully it means they’re aware of the problem of throwing someone onto Raw or SmackDown with no explanation. Kudos for this first step.

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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.