6 Ups & 5 Downs From WWE Raw (Results & Review - January 29)

3. One More For The Road

Drew McIntyre Sami Zayn Raw
WWE

If anyone felt like they were experiencing déjà vu with the main event Monday night, they weren’t wrong.

Sami Zayn and Drew McIntyre squared off in their third Raw singles match in the past three months, once again with the same result of the Scottish Warrior picking up the win with some questionable tactics.

It’s not like Zayn and McIntyre have ever wrestled a bad match, or that Sami didn’t have a reason to want to get revenge after being put on the shelf for more than a month, but this just felt like it accomplished nothing. The babyface returned from injury, got eliminated from the Royal Rumble by the guy who hurt him, then lost a singles bout to him two days later after vowing to teach him a lesson.

That’s not exactly good storytelling, and the speed at which the match came about – Zayn saved CM Punk from McIntyre in the opening segment and the match was made afterward – meant there wasn’t a decent build for what should be a bad blood match.

Sadly, good wrestling isn’t enough on its own in 2024 to give passing marks. It’s either got to really slap, or there needs to be a compelling story to it or path forward afterward for the characters, and this had none of that.

Advertisement
Contributor
Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.