9 Ups And 7 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Jan 21)

1. The Real Victim Here

finn balor braun strowman
WWE.com

You’ve got to feel for Braun Strowman here. Even if the decision to pull him from his Universal Championship match was to protect him against another loss to Brock Lesnar, it still feels like he’s being throttled down once again.

Strowman lost his title match last week, but showed up Monday night to get in Brock’s face. After calling Lesnar lucky to avoid a beating, Braun pledged to get his hands on the Beast if he emerged from Sunday with his title intact.

The problem here is that Braun simply said he’d find some way to get back to facing Brock… while the answer is right in front of his face. Sunday is the Royal Rumble PPV, with the eponymous match guaranteeing the winner a title shot at WrestleMania. And yet Braun didn’t announce he was entering the Rumble to win a title shot. Does that mean he’s not entering it, or was he too absentminded to mention it?

Either way, that doesn’t bode well for the man whose Mania match last year consisted of teaming with a 10-year-old to win the Raw Tag Team Championships.

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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.