5 Ups & 6 Downs From WWE Raw (Feb 6 - Results & Review)
Cody silent on motives, Gunther's next challenger emerges, Ripley title match set.
If you tuned into WWE Raw Monday night because you wanted to get answers to the biggest wrestling storyline of the weekend, you wasted three hours of your evening.
Raw provided no answers, no clarity, no explanation of why Cody Rhodes seemingly gave away his WrestleMania XL main event shot at Roman Reigns on SmackDown, moving out of the way for The Rock while pledging to still somehow finish the story.
Rhodes was on the show, but he wasn’t able to cut a promo, so fans were left to speculate and chant, “We want Cody!” along with a loud “Rocky sucks!” The lack of answers probably muted the crowd somewhat, as the show itself was decent at best as it limped along toward Elimination Chamber in two-plus weeks.
Cody’s direction is unclear, as are both World Title scenes. However, the Intercontinental Championship got some direction in the form of a “main event”-level challenger, Rhea Ripley got her wish with her next opponent for the Women’s World Championship, the first woman for the Elimination Chamber match won her qualifying match, and a Raw tag team emerged as the red show’s representative in a cross-brand match to determine the next challengers for the Tag Titles.
But everything is tinged with uncertainty, criticism and questioning. WWE undoubtedly will try to reverse-engineer a solution that makes it seem like this was their plan all along, but this show certainly felt like a placeholder as they scramble to make final decisions ahead of Thursday’s WrestleMania XL press conference.
Let’s get to it…