4 Ups & 7 Downs From WWE Raw (5 January - Results & Review)

1. An Underwhelming Start To 2026

WWE Raw Bron Breakker Paul Heyman
WWE

If Monday was just another typical episode of Raw, it wouldn’t be getting this criticism. But alas, WWE can’t help but overhype and underdeliver. The only thing they didn’t do was promise a new era (though if Bron Breakker had won the World Heavyweight Championship, Michael Cole would have been screaming about the Breakker Era).

WWE hyped this episode as the first Raw of 2026, the one-year anniversary of the show’s debut on Netflix, and a cross-promotion with Stranger Things. They booked three title matches and the in-ring return of Liv Morgan. They somewhat fed into the rumors of Chris Jericho possibly returning to WWE on Monday night (Raw GM Adam Pearce’s social media video mentioning “break the walls down” couldn’t have been an accident).

The show opened promisingly, with Rhea Ripley and Iyo Sky winning the women’s tag titles in a really good match, and the show closed with a flurry of action from CM Punk and Bron Breakker, but everything in between varied from dull to boring, to mediocre, to merely good. All the hype, and this really could have been any Raw in the middle of June or September, when stakes seem so much lower.

We’ve seen this regime repeatedly hype up programming and then turn in blandly competent content. It’s time to start calling it out, because it’s not OK for the biggest sports entertainment company on the planet to promise an A+ and give you a solid C.

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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.