6 Ups And 6 Downs For WWE Day 1

Brock shocker, Usos/New Day deliver, Liv hangs in there, Miz underwhelms.

WWE Day 1 Brock Lesnar
WWE.com

Man, how do you rate WWE’s first offering of 2022?

Day 1 was good enough, with a barn-burner of an opener and two really good matches to close the show. Throw in a decent tag title match in the middle and you have what should be an easy thumbs-up.

But the PPV – sorry, they’re now called “premium live events” – also included a pedestrian TV match masquerading as a monthly special-worthy bout, a decent but underwhelming match from two veterans, a confusing booking decision during the kick-off show, and the unceremonious end of a title run.

Still, it’s hard to call Day 1 a home run of an event. Maybe that’s the pessimist coming out, the person beaten down by years of subpar WWE events that disappoint more often than not. Maybe it’s because there just isn’t a lot of confidence in WWE’s booking and writing ability to do right by its performers. Liv Morgan has shown herself to be worthy of bigger things, but would anyone be surprised if she disappears from our TVs for two months for no discernible reason?

New years are supposed to be about new beginnings, so let’s give this overall positive marks, but reserve the right to self-own as being naïve later.

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 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.