Vince Russo reacts to Keith Lee's scary dive from RAW (Exclusive)
Keith Lee should count himself lucky for not suffering a potentially serious injury during his hellacious triple threat match on RAW against Sheamus and Braun Strowman.
There was a scary spot during the match in which Keith Lee executed a flip dive on Strowman and Sheamus on the outside. Keith Lee couldn't stick the landing as the back of his head awkwardly bumped off the apron before he fell on top of his opponents. The point of impact looked brutal, and thankfully, Keith Lee didn't get legitimately hurt due to the dive and could continue the match.
Vince Russo reacts to Keith Lee's diving spot from RAW
Vince Russo was critical about the Keith Lee spot on the latest edition of Sportskeeda's Legion of RAW with Dr. Chris Featherstone.
Russo: "Bro, when he did that gimmick to the outside, he missed hitting the back of his neck on that apron by, bro, he would have died. He missed by inches, hitting the back of his head on that apron."
Featherstone agreed and said that he doesn't want big men like Keith Lee to be pushed as a cruiserweight as it just isn't necessary.
Featherstone: "He shouldn't do stuff like that. I mean, I just think he shouldn't be booked like a Cruiserweight. I don't understand. There is room for the Cruiserweight feel, the high-flyer feel, but everybody doesn't have to be a Cruiserweight. He is a big 330-pound, six-foot-two, six-foot-three guy. Why is it necessary for him to do some type of flip plancha outside the ring? Just go outside the ring and just toss and just brawl him."
Russo then explained the flawed logic behind the diving spots that are a significant feature of most wrestling matches. Matches can only end inside the ring via pinfall or submission (unless it's a Falls Count Anywhere bout). Superstars executing dives on the outside thus go against the basic rule and reasoning of a wrestling match.
Russo explained:
Russo: "I mean, think about the logic of this too. This is what drives me crazy, too, with all the flipity, flipity, flipity! This is what drives me nuts. You said yourself, bro. You go back to the early 80s. You are a historian. What ends a wrestling match? You pin the opponent in the ring on his shoulders, 1...2...3! Keyword being 'in the ring.' So, if you can only win the match by pinfall inside of the ring, why are you diving on people outside of the ring? The logic has totally been tossed away. So now, Keith Lee is going to dive to the outside, and he is going to lay out the opponents and maybe knock himself out. In the meantime, within twenty seconds, he has got to shake it off, then he has got to pick up two three-hundred-pound carcasses and somehow slide them into the ring, get into the ring. There is no logic to diving on anybody on the outside—no logic in wrestling."
Featherstone chimed in and made an excellent point by highlighting the Undertaker's dives, which only happened in the big matches. It felt like a special attraction exclusively reserved for matches in which The Deadman had to work hard for his win.
Featherstone: "Here's the thing with doing stuff too much. If you do that dive spot, don't make it all the time. So, when you do it, it has more of an attraction feel, i.e., The Undertaker. So, The Undertaker is six-foot-nine, six-foot-ten, 300 pounds. When he does the dive outside the ring, he doesn't do it all the time. So when he does it in big matches, it's more like an 'awe' type of feel as opposed to doing it every single match."
During the latest installment of Legion of RAW, Vince Russo also criticized Keith Lee's style of cutting promos and why he thinks the RAW Superstar will not get over if he continues to do the same.