5 Ups And Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Dec 15)

2. Treading Water Has Begun

The gap between Survivor Series and TLC was a scant three weeks, leaving barely enough time to digest the departure of the Authority and set up an eight-match pay-per-view. But the gap between TLC and Royal Rumble? That would be six weeks, with the usually slow, no-angle advancing weeks around the Christmas and New Year€™s holidays in the middle. This means that storylines most likely will move slowly, almost repeating themselves over the next couple weeks. There were a couple major developments Monday night (more on them in a bit), but given that two of the six bouts were rematches from TLC, another was a tag team match combining two other TLC contests and a fourth was a singles match derived from a TLC tag team match, it seems like the slow doggie-paddle toward Royal Rumble is underway.