5 Ups & 7 Downs From WWE Raw (Jan 31)
Brock to challenge for both titles, Rousey evades, Becky still gets opponent.
After a widely panned, depth-lacking Royal Rumble, it’s fair to say that Road to WrestleMania had a few potholes dug into it at the starting line. And that meant Monday Night Raw needed to try to smooth things out – which they didn’t really accomplish.
Brock Lesnar and Ronda Rousey winning their respective Rumble matches smacked of desperation, but that doesn’t mean WWE could turn those into net positives. The problem is that they didn’t do that on Raw. They still didn’t cast a reason that Lesnar needed the win to get a world title match. In fact, he was immediately handed a shot on Raw… just for the other world title that Roman Reigns doesn’t hold.
Rousey was the bigger story coming out of Royal Rumble, but WWE fumbled that slightly on Monday, with Ronda’s promo falling flat and leaving her standing unclear, which made it tough for fans to pick a side between her and Becky Lynch.
Still, Raw managed to give us a solid TV main event between AJ Styles and Rey Mysterio, a reset of Bobby Lashley, and set up a dream match between Becky and Lita. This certainly was watchable, but again you remind yourself this is a billion-dollar company with dozens of writers and they still flail about like neophyte indy promotion sometimes.
Let’s get to it…