4 Ups And 9 Downs From WWE Legends Raw (Jan 4)
Poorly written show botches Goldberg's return, screws up US title feud, messes up tag champs.
Welcome to the new year, same as the old year.
The first Raw of 2021 started off with some promise, but it quickly fizzled out into a big mess of disappointment and underachievement. It’s really funny, because the show was bookended by solid matches, had a bunch of legends sprinkled throughout, and set up two title programs. You’d think that would be the recipe for a good episode.
But we were presented with an episode that fell short in delivering a good program at nearly every turn, with p*ss-poor writing that constantly took the easiest, most logical storyline, crumpled it up and threw it away, and then scribbled in a convoluted mess in its place.
Only these writers could take the simple act of Goldberg showing up to challenge Drew McIntyre for a WWE Championship match at the Royal Rumble and turn it into a weird issue of the champ not giving enough respect to legends. Only these writers could set up a United States Championship feud by making both competitors look weak at the same time. Only these writers could have the new tag team champs squabbling with each other two weeks after winning the straps and losing a nontitle match.
Royal Rumble season usually marks a turning point in the writing, where things get tighter and stronger, but this was anything but, and it certainly wasn’t a “new direction” like we’d been hearing, sadly.
Let’s get to it…