8 Ups & 4 Downs From WWE Raw (Jan 9 - Review)

Raw saved by strong performance from entire Judgment Day, especially Dominik Mysterio.

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WWE.com

After a lacklustre start to 2023, WWE looked deep into its playbook and pulled out a couple of cheat codes to get them through on Monday’s episode of Raw: the Bloodline and Judgment Day.

The two groups were heavily featured Monday night, with the Bloodline once again invading Raw and landing an impromptu match, and then the Judgment Day taking part in the five-team tag team turmoil match that occupied the last hour of the show. What made the latter interesting is that the heel faction started the match and lasted the entire bout, putting them on center display for the entire hour.

Remove the two acts from Raw and you were left with a Bobby Lashley return, JBL insulting the crowd, “Michin” Mia Yim losing yet again and asking fans to care about her, and the Raw debut of Uncle Howdy, who seemed to imply he had control over Alexa Bliss.

The moral of the story here is that without the Bloodline and Dominik Mysterio, Raw is trash. OK, that’s a joke. But the MVP of Raw this week has to be Judgment Day collectively, as they occupied nearly half of the show and shined at every step, especially when Mysterio relayed life lessons he learned from his prison stint. We should all aspire to emulate Big Dom.

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.