6 Ups & 4 Downs From WWE Raw (Results & Review - 22 Jan)

4. False Bravado

If there’s one thing Becky Lynch excels at, it’s exuding confidence and strength, whether as a challenger or champion, underdog or favorite.

So it wasn’t much of a shock that The Man stormed out to interrupt a Nia Jax promo and told her “shut up… you dope.” She blew past Jax beating her a couple weeks ago, congratulating her for finally having another accomplishment to talk about after five years. She cut into Nia, right up until Bayley interrupted, triggering a brawl between the three that saw Jax stand tall with Becky tossed over the top rope.

The look on Lynch’s face after getting bested by Jax again carried over to later when Rhea Ripley approached her backstage and told her to make other WrestleMania plans, a great dig just one week after she had told Becky she hoped The Man won the Royal Rumble.

It quickly became clear that Lynch’s fired-up promo was just a lot of false bravado, trying to push past her loss but obviously not over it and not able to turn the corner. Sports fans see teams do this all the time when they try to rebound from an unexpected loss. They try to brush it off, learn from it and go out and win the next one.

Here, Becky hasn’t been able to brush it off, and she got upended again, so all the doubt comes creeping back in. She’ll have to stop puffing out her chest and trying to fool herself if she’s going to actually overcome this obstacle, and that’s the story for her on her road to WrestleMania.