6 Ups & 4 Downs From WWE Raw (16 Dec - Results & Review)

Downs…

4. A ‘December Show’ At Last

For the longest time, December marked a time when WWE would phone in their shows, booking long matches and talking segments that didn’t really advance much, as they clearly were spinning their wheels heading into the holidays before ramping back up in the new year for the Royal Rumble and WrestleMania season.

That trend has reversed itself recently, with WWE managing to mostly book strong shows even during the holidays. However, Monday’s show was the first this year to even remotely feel like one of those holiday season episodes.

While there’s plenty of praise ahead for Raw, it has to be noted that the show mainly consisted of a lengthy opening promo/brawl between Seth Rollins and CM Punk, an Intercontinental Championship match, and a World Tag Team Championship main event. The first two events ate up nearly the entire first half of Monday Night Raw, and the tag title match swallowed the last 25 minutes. Everything else really felt like filler.

That seems to be the newer trend for these holiday shows: book a couple of worthwhile matches and moments, and then stretch them out to fill up as much show as possible, then fill the rest with, well, filler, and you’ve got an episode.

It’s hard to describe beyond that vibe. The first 50 minutes felt really good, and then it trailed off into low-calorie fluff until the final minutes of the main event. That doesn’t make this a bad episode, but collectively, there were more treadmill segments than hugely significant moments. Triple H is just better at disguising it by stretching out the really good stuff to fill more time.