6 Ups & 7 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Jan 3)

First time title match set, Priest overcomes split personalities, Brock, Heyman reunite.

Brock Lesnar
WWE.com

You know how you know when you’re on the Road to the Road to WrestleMania? When stuff starts making sense and things click better than usual on Raw.

That’s what happened Monday night, as they started building to a handful of big matches for the Royal Rumble. Coming out of Raw, we knew what a major title match was going to be, that next week a challenger will be named for another title, and a big tag match is on the horizon.

Throw in some good in-ring action and you have the makings of a pretty decent Raw overall. Oh sure, they had some nonsensical booking, like positioning jobbers for title shots in what appeared to be haphazard booking, or the writers overwriting an over wrestler to the point where it could overshadow his positives.

But Raw managed to pull through Monday night, with Brock Lesnar opening the show strong and a fatal four-way bout closing the program on another strong note. We’re still grading a bit on a curve here – there’s too much silliness and shortsighted booking – but we’ll give it passing marks for this week.

Oh, and Vince McMahon jabbered at Austin Theory. Nothing really to add up or down about that, but it happened.

With that said, let’s get to it…

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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 fortunately became a fan in time for WrestleMania III and came back as a fan after a long high school hiatus before WM XIV. Monday nights in the Carlson household are reserved for viewing Raw -- for better or worse.