9 Ups And 6 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Dec 26)
One guess who stands tall to close out 2016...
WWE Raw closed out 2016 with a solid if unspectacular episode Monday night, producing something that wasn’t offense, but wasn’t memorable either.
And maybe that’s a metaphor for WWE overall in 2016: The product was solid at times, but it rarely crossed over into the realm of being truly awesome and something you’ll remember for years to come. Maybe that’s why WWE didn’t do the Slammy Awards this December. (Or maybe they couldn’t figure out how to encourage people to vote for Roman Reigns as superstar of the year.)
Raw produced two championship matches, set up another for 205 Live and regularly hyped the three title matches taking place on SmackDown Tuesday night. But Raw was not about closing out the year with a bang, but more of getting to the finish line and looking ahead to turning the corner to 2017.
The announcers hyped an appearance next week by Goldberg, who along with Brock Lesnar have rendered the other 28 spots in the Royal Rumble meaningless – not because they are meaningless themselves, but because no one will really talk about them on WWE programming, all of the focus will be on those two.
But this is it for 2016 for the red brand, and while there were more positives Monday night, that is more a function of the show not being offensive rather than it being entertaining.
So what delivered the goods and what delivered a lump of coal? Let’s get to it…