3 Ups & 4 Downs From WWE Raw (29 December - Results & Review)

2. Middling Action Precedes A Hot Finish

The Usos
WWE

Ah, the WWE 2025 main event formula: a 15-20-minute match that is three-quarters filler and one-quarter killer.

The Usos versus Dragon Lee and AJ Styles might get some rave reviews for its closing moments, which objectively contained some heart-pounding action, but that hot finish was preceded by a mostly dismissible, sometimes clumsy first 15 minutes that just filled space and time. They could have hacked 8-10 minutes off the match and had a really fun, energetic sprint that would have captured fans’ attention throughout.

Instead, the crowd was quiet for good sections of the first 12-15 minutes before things really picked up. Credit has to go to the now-former Tag Team Champs, who controlled the pace and gave the Usos their first “good” match since re-forming as a tag team.

It’s the same issue across a great deal of today’s wrestling: a belief that main events or even just “epic” matches need to be a certain length. This and the opening match could have lost seven minutes each, and they could have thrown a fifth match out there with entrances using that time.

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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.