4 Ups & 5 Downs From WWE Monday Night Raw (17 November - Results & Review)

4. Memory Holed

Madison Square Garden and social media must have been subject to amnesia Monday night, as the collective reaction from fans in attendance and online was that Dolph Ziggler was sorely missed and a tremendous fan favorite.

(Stay tuned for positives in the “ups” column.)

It’s been just north of two years since Ziggler last wrestled in WWE, and at the time he left, he was barely getting a reaction. Fans were about as apathetic as could be about Dolph, and his act had run stale. No one was taking him seriously as anything more than a name jobber-to-the-stars.

Fast-forward to Monday night, and you would have thought Shawn Michaels came out of retirement. It’s difficult to call this a nostalgia reaction when Ziggler wrestled for WWE into mid-2023 and is still going strong in the ring.

This felt more like a false dawn than anything. If Dolph came back on the strength of this pop, fans would be back to “eh” within two months because they’d rather chant, “Yeet!” for five minutes straight.

Stop acting like y’all actually missed Ziggler. You had him for 20 years and were completely bored of him. Now you’ve got 10 guys with catchphrases to yell.

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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.