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

New year, same mixed bag of solid wrestling, poor booking.

seth rollins dean ambrose
WWE.com

When the first Monday Night Raw of 2019 opened up, it looked like we might finally be seeing some of that “new era” stuff the McMahons and Triple H talked about last month. It appeared like we were seeing something a little different, with a charged opening and a solid six-man tag match.

And then the wheels fell off.

Instead of “new and fresh,” we got more Baron Corbin. More Nia Jax. More stupid booking. More meaningless pacing from Brock Lesnar. More stupid booking.

Raw wasn’t unwatchable, but it just was something that left you wondering what was supposed to be new and fresh about this. Sure, we got the hype video promising new faces “on their way to WWE,” but let’s remind everyone that it’s six wrestlers split among Raw and SmackDown, so they’re not going to have a colossal effect on the shows.

That means that if Raw is to improve, it will start with the writing. The talent is there, but when Corbin and Jax are eating up a half-hour of Raw between the two of them, that’s not an improvement. When your monster face is made to look like an idiot against a part-time champion, that’s not an improvement.

With that said, let’s check out how Raw fared this week. 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.