9 Ups And 4 Downs From WWE Raw (Feb 3)

Orton steals show in silence, Latino star debuts, KO, McIntyre, Ricochet shine.

by Scott Carlson
Randy Orton
WWE.com

Whenever WrestleMania season rolls around, suddenly the writing gets a little tighter. Storylines start making a little more sense. The promos get sharper. The loose ends get tied up better.

But what we got Monday night was even better than that.

Raw was a solid effort, with nearly everything at least hitting level, and most rising above the norm. It was an enjoyable episode with good action, an enthusiastic crowd, good acting, solid promos and some good setups for future feuds and matches.

There’s only one explanation: The writing team was snowed in and couldn’t make it to the arena. Seriously, what other explanation can you have? At the very least, Vince McMahon didn’t show up and rewrite the script at 4pm.

Whether it was Randy Orton attempting to explain why he attacked Edge last week, Latino stars getting a fair amount of time to really shine and set up some rivalries, Kevin Owens getting a hero’s applause despite coming up short, or Drew McIntyre keeping momentum going, Raw delivered on a lot of different levels Monday night.

Sure, there were a couple bumps in the road, but that’s to be expected. Overall, this was a breezy episode that brought things a little more into focus for WrestleMania 36 and locked down a world title match for Super Showdown.

Let’s get to it…

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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.