8 Ups And 7 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Oct 24)

5. Overcoming The Odds

kevin owens seth rollins chris jericho
WWE.com

It’s understandable that WWE wants Seth Rollins to be the mega-babyface on Raw, so they would naturally take steps to rally fans to him. But the company tends to hold to the same method: Have the hero overcome the odds to win.

There really was no reason for Rollins to win the triple threat match against Chris Jericho and WWE Universal Champion Kevin Owens that essentially was a 2-on-1 match. And it was especially odd after Rollins had been beaten to a pulp, and yet he managed to get a double rollup and double pin.

The aftermath of the match worked really well, with KO getting the upper hand and demolishing Rollins, then standing tall in the ring with the title. Unless they were going to really tease tension between Jericho and Owens, it probably would have worked better to have Jeri-KO beat Rollins down (with the Architect getting a couple hope spots) and win convincingly, leaving Rollins’ status for HIAC in question.

To be fair, this is a criticism, but it’s not a comment that what the company did was a failure. The main event just felt flat without any real tension, and then Rollins scored a win out of nowhere in an unconvincing manner.

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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.