4 Ups & 8 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Dec 14)
Raw falls apart again; Styles delivers, Lee suffers, Lana/Nia confounds.
If you were ever looking for a good example of how Raw being a three-hour show is a death-knell for the program, look no further than Monday’s episode.
Raw started out strongly on Monday night, with a guilty pleasure of a goofy opening segment leading directly into a solid opening match between Sheamus and AJ Styles. We also got a pretty good six-man tag match (if you discount the retread of a tag title match announced during the bout).
But after that, Raw fell off a cliff. The second hour was a disaster that saw stupid storylines, confusing booking decisions, poor wrestling, and bad promos. Only the main event brawl really clicked the rest of the way, as everything else was just an abject failure. If you could watch the first hour and then skip to the last 15 minutes, you’d have a pretty decent episode. But otherwise, you probably found yourself yelling at the TV by the end of the second hour.
The one storyline that has carried through the last three months – Lana being tormented by Nia Jax – was finally building toward a poetic justice resolution, and then WWE seemingly jettisoned it stupidly on Monday night. That alone deserves serious derision here.
With that said, let’s get to it…