7 Ups & 6 Downs From WWE Raw (2 March - Results & Review)
Punk and Roman tear into each other, new IC champ crowned, The Vision has a terrible night.
It truly is amazing to watch how quickly a show can fall off in one evening.
WWE Raw on Monday night started off hot with an action-packed opening angle, followed by a tremendously fun match between Gunther and Dragon Lee. But the show fell off into mediocrity afterward, finally spiking for the final match and the main event confrontation between Roman Reigns and CM Punk.
If not for the opening and closing half-hours, Raw would have been a dud of a show. Instead, it was a perfectly serviceable episode, but that in and of itself is a problem for one simple reason: it’s WrestleMania Season. Mediocre programs are not acceptable, especially not when ticket sales are significantly off from last year and the buzz for the show itself is a shadow of what it was last year, the year before that, and the year before that.
All indicators point to a colder product that, while perfectly passable most of the time, isn’t going to cut it less than two months out from 'Mania 42. It’s not even that Raw was actively bad. WWE can’t puff out its chest and brag about how huge WrestleMania is and how powerful, popular, and cash-flush they are and then not expect to be graded more seriously.
Unfortunately, the product – while better in 2026 thus far overall – is still off and could use a heavy dose of whatever Reigns and Punk are taking. You just get the feeling that they’re going to be doing the heavy lifting, and they know it.
Let’s get to it…