7 Ups & 3 Downs From WWE Raw (9 Dec - Results & Review)

1. Sowing Seeds For Later

As noted earlier, CM Punk and Seth Rollins are on a collision course, though it doesn’t seem as though they’re rushing to a conclusion to that story.

Rollins gave his rebuttal to Punk’s interview on Monday night, adding more context to the rivalry between them by pointing out that when Punk left WWE 11 years ago, he ghosted everyone close to him and took potshots at the company during his absence. He only came back, Rollins surmised, because he’d failed at everything else, burned all his bridges, and “the money was right.”

That alone would have merited positive marks, but Sami Zayn came down to apologize for accusing him of attacking Jey Uso last week, and more importantly, to draw a comparison that has been sitting right at surface level for some time now: Rollins has been acting more and more like Drew McIntyre as he continues to engage with Punk. The observation has the benefit of being both accurate and insulting, making it the right kind of point to make here.

Zayn’s observation opens the door plainly for Rollins to go down the same path that Drew did last year, but it also could be a red herring, with Punk eventually turning heel. Either way, the villain in this story will feel justified in his actions, which is what you want in this situation.