8 Ups & 4 Downs From WWE Raw (13 Jan - Results & Review)

Downs…

4. A Good Version Of A Bad Trope?

Show-opening promo trains have a high rate of failure, often devolving into a morass of contrived interruptions with wrestlers talking over one another.

Raw opened with a high-end promo train, with CM Punk, Seth Rollins, and Drew McIntyre all making their way out to the ring to squabble. Worse, they came out ostensibly to engage in another WWE trope: declaring for the Royal Rumble and pledging to “throw 29 other superstars over the top rope” while reminding everyone that the Rumble is “every man for himself”.

McIntyre even alluded to this being a tired trope by pretending to muse about finding such a match that guaranteed himself a world title match at WrestleMania before realizing that the Rumble was his salvation.

The only saving grace of this segment was that all three men have been intertwined together in a long story stretching back to Punk’s return to WWE more than a year ago, and have crossed paths multiple times since. Their history and animosity are what saved this, as all three men being in the Royal Rumble means that there is drama in who enters first, whether two of them team up to eliminate the third, and how they all interact with Roman Reigns.

The reality of these three men, plus Reigns, plus an X-factor like John Cena, makes for a dramatic Rumble, and WWE leaned into all of that during this promo. That was a redeeming factor here. This could have gone either way as a positive or a negative, but it just barely missed clearing the bar.