5 Ups & 4 Downs From WWE Raw (27 Jan - Results & Review)

2. Backstage Nonsense

When Lyra Valkyria won the Women’s Intercontinental Championship two weeks ago, it felt like a happening because of how the tournament closed out, and that she finally had won a big match. She pledged to be a fighting champion.

Last week, she was not physically on the show, which is perfectly understandable. But then she appeared Monday night in a backstage interview where she was asked about her first opponent for the Women’s IC title, and she quickly sidestepped that to announce she was entering the Royal Rumble.

That’s not exactly a ringing endorsement of the new title if the inaugural champ isn’t even considering defending the title but instead is focused on winning a shot at another title. Yes, everyone should want a world title, period, but at least they could have definitively said she would defend the title next week or the week after.

But it got worse as American Made slid onto the screen so that Ivy Nile could step up as the potential first challenger – you know, the woman who Lyra pinned in the first round and hasn’t won a singles match since October.

And then American Made happened upon Alpha Academy obliviously making a TikTok video just 10 feet away, allowing Chad Gable to take a verbal swipe at Otis… because we need to rekindle that feud.

Terrible stuff all around.

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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.