10 Burning Questions For WWE Raw (Jan 11)

Brock is back, but Cena's gone. How will all of this work out?

by Scott Carlson

WWE started off 2016 in fine fashion last week with an episode of Raw that managed to avoid several of the pitfalls that plagued the company€™s flagship program last year, but the goodwill was destined to be short-lived. Despite a solid (if unspectacular) Raw, bad news almost immediately hit WWE, with John Cena going down with a shoulder injury that required surgery, potentially putting him on the shelf until the summer. So instead of talking about WWE building for the future and taking a daring risk by making Roman Reigns defend the WWE World Heavyweight Championship in the Royal Rumble match (the first time the title will be defended in the Rumble), We€™re left talking about whether WWE is snake-bitten. The list of superstars on the injured list reads like an all-star roster: Cena, Randy Orton, Seth Rollins, Cesaro, Sting, Nikki Bella and others. The joke on this site about Vince McMahon wanting to encase Reigns in bubble wrap would be funny if it weren€™t so morbid right now. But we still have an episode of Raw in front of us, just two weeks before the Royal Rumble, the official kickoff of the Road to WrestleMania. Injuries or not, the march to Dallas will continue, so we should take a look at some of the big questions that will need answering when Raw goes live Monday night.

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 fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.