10 Ups And 7 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Jan 4)

The Royal Rumble gets a huge twist as Reigns battles the odds.

By Scott Carlson /

Maybe the holidays did WWE writers some good, with the creative team unwinding with family and making New Year€™s resolutions to stop insulting fans€™ intelligence all the time and booking a better wrestling show. Because while Raw Monday night wasn€™t a blow-away program, there wasn€™t much that was patently bad, and it was pretty entertaining overall. The main hook for the program €“ smartly announced a full week in advance €“ was Roman Reigns defending his WWE World Heavyweight Championship against former champ Sheamus with Mr. McMahon as the guest referee. If you wondered for even a half-second whether the refereeing would be unbiased, then you haven€™t been a wrestling fan for more than a day. Still, having the deck stacked like that sometimes is what draws fans out to watch: they want to see how the hero overcomes the odds. Amazingly, after a year of start and stop pushes for Reigns, WWE has resigned to fully get behind him with everything, including the company€™s best heel character, the evil chairman. And if live crowd reactions are to be believed, it looks like fans are starting to rally behind Roman. If ratings bear that out, then WWE will at least have a reason to continue to push forward in this direction. But for now, what Superman punched the opposition and what got speared out of its boots? Let€™s get to it€