-”A” for effort, Seth. I’ll tell you what, the television feud between Seth Rollins and CM Punk is solid stuff. Both guys can clearly articulate a beef with the other, there is palpable tension between both men, and the audience is buying what they’re selling in terms of a rivalry. All good things if you’re WWE. The real life happenings in this are fascinating too. It feels like Seth Rollins is a bit flabbergasted as to why crowds aren’t cheering him like they are Punk. Rollins is getting the babyface boos and while that was inevitable one way or the other, my pick would have been Punk getting them because of the equity that Seth has built up throughout the years with WWE fans. Instead, Punk is by far the more over guy and it shows during their interactions.
Tone setter
-The brawl between Punk and Rollins did it’s job this week as being a physical lead in to their match on the Netflix premiere of Raw on January 6. They’ve got a couple weeks to put context behind the match, but this brawl was a smart tone setter.
-A good Bron Breakker vs. Ludwig Kaiser match this week. The totally clean finish was refreshing. Breakker was the better man and he won. Kaiser lost, but isn’t worse off in terms of his push. More and more it seems like they are leaning babyface with Breakker. They certainly did this week.
-The Judgment Day is hanging on by a thread. It’s like if the OG Judgment Day faction was Friends, the version we have of that group now is comparable to the Joey spinoff. It just doesn’t work and even if it did for a little bit, it doesn’t long term. Time to pull the plug.
Drew and Seth … a team?
-The Drew McIntyre dynamic with Seth Rollins is going to be interesting to watch over the next couple weeks. Will they bond over their disdain for CM Punk and The Bloodline? It’s possible. I liked Drew a lot during his segments this week. Ice cold, unlikable, but pretty much on the money in terms of his assessment of things happening on Raw.
-I don’t know that WWE could have found a better character than Rey Mysterio to kick The New Day out of the WWE locker room. Mysterio brought the perfect mix of veteran credibility and likability to the table in playing disappointed Dad to Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods. Kingston and Woods being completely confused as to why people have navigated away from them is icing on the cake. Great stuff.
-Alright, so we’re getting another Rhea Ripley vs. Liv Morgan match? Good, but this has to be it. If WWE had ideas of getting the match to WrestleMania, they certainly can’t do it if they run it here in the near future. When they do it, Ripley goes over and the feud ends. Period. End of story. Both Liv and Rhea need fresh opponents.
Truly mid-card
-Glad to see Zoey Stark win her WWE Women’s Intercontinental Championship Tournament first-round match. She’s a solid mid-card heel to face Dakota Kai in the semifinals. So far, true middle of the card women have been advancing and that talent vying for the women’s IC prize is the only way it has an impactful spot on the show each week.
-Now, the tournament match itself? Yikes. Sloppy is an understatement. The finish, especially. Why not redo that? A more seasoned group of performers would have.
-WWE did a very nice job of building up the tag team championship main event between The War Raiders and Judgment Day. For the first time ever, War Raiders presented as real people and WWE tapped into that via their health issues. Tremendously effective stuff and it set the table for the match itself.
New champs
-The tag title match went exactly like it should have and was well booked. Damian Priest causing a distraction and leading to Balor and McDonagh losing was the exact way to go. It advanced Balor vs. Priest and got the titles off them in favor of the likable babyfaces. I could have done without Priest hiding and knowing exactly where to pop up to make said interference, but the end result overall was a fun TV match and title change.
What did you think of this week’s episode of WWE Raw? Let us know in the comments!
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