7 Ups And 7 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Jan 9)
The Phenom returns with a surprise, HBK returns with a movie to plug. Plus, a new champ!
WWE continued to pull part-timers and Hall of Famers out from the woodwork this week, getting Undertaker and Shawn Michaels to show up and hopefully liven the show and improve the ratings.
In Undertaker’s case, the Deadman announced his entrance to the Royal Rumble to spark interest, while Michaels plugged a new movie after taking a stroll down Memory Lane. Still, people undoubtedly tuned in to see what both men said and did.
Beyond that, we saw Stephanie McMahon bully female talent without any retribution (yet), New Day bullying other wrestlers, Braun Strowman continuing his escalation up the card, and Seth Rollins not backing down. We also saw a new champion, which came after the never-say-die Roman Reigns fought to his last breath.
We saw Rollins and Taker announce that they will enter the Rumble, giving us a few decent combatants to build the Rumble around. We saw the tag champs’ parity battle with another team by having one partner lost to a second teammate on the away team, then reversed the second week with the other teammates. We saw women defer to Stephanie McMahon. And we saw a lackluster in-ring product, the easiest thing WWE could fix right now.
Let’s find out what is ready to rumble and what will be sent back to the drawing board.