7 Ups And 5 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Dec 19)

Strowman is wronged, Charlotte and Sasha find new feuds, and Enzo is a creep.

Chris Jericho shark cage
WWE.com

On the heels of a lackluster Roadblock: End of the Line PPV, WWE moved into the holiday season, which typically has been a slow period for the company, both in terms of ratings and in storylines. But Monday’s episode of Raw proved to be entertaining in some ways and set up some storylines heading into the final two episodes of Raw of 2016.

Even though Roadblock was supposed to be the “end of the line,” we saw some feuds continue from Sunday, including another start-and-stop bout between Rusev and Big Cass. We saw Enzo Amore run his mouth some more and once again saw it get the diminutive dynamo into trouble. We saw the women’s division get shaken up a bit. And we saw the biggest monster on the Raw roster finally make wakes at the top level, attacking bigger stars.

WWE is closing out 2016 with a decent showing, but we have a ways to go before the Royal Rumble, and even longer until WrestleMania XXXIII. There’s a lot of television to go, and it will be challenging to pull everything together effectively and build up new stars properly. This hasn’t been a strong suit for WWE, so this could be a real challenge. But first, we have to get through 2016.

So what received a plethora of presents and what got a lump of coal? Let’s get to it…

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.