5 Most head-scratching decisions from WWE RAW (Dec 10th)
In comparison to recent weeks, the December 10th episode of Monday Night Raw was a show littered with several plus points.
Firstly, the main event TLC bout between Seth Rollins and Baron Corbin was a great match. Throw in more domination from Drew McIntyre, new Tag Team Champions, and arguably the best promo of Natalya’s career, and the show was solid if not spectacular. And right now, “solid if not spectacular” is a huge improvement on “god-awful, desperate, and nonsensical”.
It’s been well documented, but the December 3rd Raw episode was officially the lowest-rated offering in the long-running show’s near-26-year-history. However you choose to look at it, however, you may try to rationalise it, however you try to frame it, that’s bad. Like, really bad.
That said, there were still some odd, peculiar moments dotted throughout this week's Raw broadcast. Of course, managing to maintain high quality throughout a live three-hour TV show is always going to be a tough task, but the WWE doesn’t help themselves on that front; often making boneheaded decisions or questionable creative calls.
With all of that taken into account, then, let’s take a look at the five most utterly head-scratching moments from this most recent episode of Monday Night Raw.
#5 Again Highlighting the Lesnar Situation
To give WWE some leeway, their plans for the Universal Championship were thrown up in the air once Roman Reigns revealed his leukemia battle.
With that in mind, the only two options on the table for them as the new Universal Champ at that point in time were Braun Strowman or Brock Lesnar. And thus, the decision was made, rightly or wrongly, to put the gold back on Paul Heyman’s Beast.
It’s one thing to have the belt on the absentee Lesnar, but the WWE have to be careful with how they present Brock and the Raw brand’s biggest prize. Having the Universal Champion only appear once every two or three months is hugely undermining to the brand and its main title, so referring to Lesnar’s absence – as was the case on this week’s show – is a questionable move.
To go even further than that, though, Seth Rollins highlighted that Brock hasn’t actually competed on Raw since 2002. That’s a whopping 16 years!
Sure, many of those 16 years were spent either on SmackDown, trying out for the NFL, or competing in UFC, but the message presented by Rollins’ simply came off as Lesnar not deeming the company’s biggest show as being worth his time since the Attitude Era came to a close.
By presenting Lesnar as someone who deems Raw as unimportant, you have the risk of having the fans starting to think the same thing.