8 Ups And 5 Downs From WWE Raw (Jan 27)

Edge is back, but Orton might have short-circuited it.

Randy Orton Edge
WWE.com

WrestleMania season is upon us, which sometime provides WWE an excellent opportunity to focus.

The company’s writers are often all over the map, but when you give them a hard deadline for the biggest show of the year, it something forces them to get down to things in a smart fashion. That’s what we got Monday night.

Drew McIntyre continued his build toward his showdown with Brock Lesnar, who still is harboring ill will toward the Scot. Edge made his return to Raw one night after an entirely improbable appearance at the Royal Rumble. He didn’t escape unscathed though, as we presumably set up another major Mania match.

We also got a couple decent matches along the way, though we also got way too many squashes for one night, as every other match was a jobber squash. That’s fine a couple times, but when five of the nine matches are squashes, it’s something to make mention here and keep an eye on for next week.

The Road to WrestleMania is off to a pretty decent start, and hopefully WWE has figured out how to get there from here. Even with several storylines set into motion Monday night, where still some work left to be done. Let’s hope they can build off this week and continue to deliver solid episodes.

With that said, let’s get to it…

Advertisement
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.