Maybe the holidays did WWE writers some good, with the creative team unwinding with family and making New Years resolutions to stop insulting fans intelligence all the time and booking a better wrestling show. Because while Raw Monday night wasnt a blow-away program, there wasnt 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 havent 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 companys 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? Lets get to it
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.
