4 Ups & 11 Downs From WWE Raw (Jan 11)

3. Making Due

AJ Styles drew gulak
WWE.com

No one was really expecting Drew Gulak to pull off a miracle win against AJ Styles, but that wasn’t the point.

If anything, the Styles/Gulak match was a reminder that the former WWE Cruiserweight Champion is much more than a 24/7 division geek. Gulak is a solid, well-rounded wrestler capable of having quality matches with almost anyone. He could be a useful role-player on the roster, having good undercard matches and providing a nice change-of-pace from time to time.

Gulak landed some nice offense before being spooked by Omos and falling to the Phenomenal Forearm, and his segment with Styles and Adam Pearce was also good, as he made a great point about how AJ (and many others) can just declare themselves for the Royal Rumble, but Drew could not.

You hope that WWE would learn from this and use their wrestlers better, but we’ll probably see Gulak chasing R-Truth around backstage next week.

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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.