3 Ups & 4 Downs From WWE Raw (22 December - Results & Review)
Gunther continues to be WWE's most hated, little else of consequence happens on dull holiday show.
If you happened to miss WWE Raw on Monday night, you not only are forgiven, you are envied.
Raw was not a particularly bad episode, but it certainly was some of the most inessential and inconsequential programming the show has produced. If anything, it harkened back to the holiday season programming of years past, where Raw and SmackDown felt like obligations, content churn to fill a spot on television.
Announcers Michael Cole and Corey Graves spent more time hyping the one-year Netflix anniversary show in two weeks than they did promoting the action taking place on Monday’s program. The runtime was noticeably shorter than a typical two-and-a-half-hour episode, airing four matches that really accomplished very little beyond keeping rivalries for the next two weeks top-of-mind.
The main event was a throwback of sorts, with The Vision fighting CM Punk and Rey Mysterio in a tag match that immediately was followed by a Vision beatdown of Punk. In some ways, it’s fitting that the penultimate Raw of 2025 closed out with WWE’s most popular option for Raw main events this year.
Probably the only thing to seek out (after reading this recap column, of course) would be Gunther’s involvement in the show, which maybe ate up five-to-seven minutes of screen time in total, but was extremely economical in how it continued to convey him as the most hated man in WWE, both in the arena and backstage too.
Let’s get to it…