7 Ups And 5 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Jan 15)

Braun gets fired, runs amok, and gets rehired. Other stuff happens too.

braun strowman raw
WWE.com

Raw was dominated by one monster Monday night, and depending on your view of how things went, you either loved Raw or felt that it crossed over from entertaining to ridiculous.

Braun Strowman ran amok for the first hour of Raw, dominating the programming in a way we haven’t seen in some time. If you love seeing Strowman destroy people and stuff, then you were in luck. If you are bothered by logic gaps and poor writing, you might not have been able to overlook them during Braun’s reign of terror.

Still, Raw certainly gave viewers something different Monday night. In addition to Braun, we saw another super-human superstar, Goldberg, become the first person announced for the WWE Hall of Fame. We saw Asuka and Nia Jax square off for the first time. We saw Seth Rollins bring back an old favorite. And we saw a couple of throwbacks throw down.

We also saw another upset that might not mean anything. We saw more stagnation in the story of Woken Matt Hardy. And we saw an abrupt upset of a former women’s champion.

It’s also notable that next week’s Raw is not only the 25th anniversary show, it’s the go-home program before the Royal Rumble, and it remains to be seen how WWE can jam in all the legends and still tie up any loose ends for the PPV.

With that said, let’s get to it…

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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 fortunately became a fan in time for WrestleMania III and came back as a fan after a long high school hiatus before WM XIV. Monday nights in the Carlson household are reserved for viewing Raw -- for better or worse.