“I’m Better Than You, And You Know It”

"Every Man Has A Price For The Million Dollar Man"

"The Best There Is, The Best There Was, And The Best There Ever Will Be"

"Whatcha Gonna Do, When Hulkamania Runs Wild On You"

"And That's The Bottom Line Because Stone Cold Said So"

<h3><strong>Formation of Pseudo-Shield?</strong></h3>
<p>We like this segment. This did a lot of things.</p>
<p>First, the champion’s explanation for his victory the previous week made sense. Reigns never beat Joe before; there must be some added motivation for him to pull off the unprecedented feat. And (within the WWE world at least), there was hardly any greater motivation for Reigns that to avenge for his Shield buddy Dean Ambrose, who got injured by none other than Samoa Joe. And in the same vein, that explanation did not make Samoa Joe look bad in defeat. He was his usual badass self, just not fully anticipating how much better a person like Reigns can be when he was that motivated.</p>
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<p>Second, the segment further dug down on the storyline around Jason Jordan and his interaction with The Shield. Jason Jordan has been portrayed as this overly-eager up-and-comer, who is on the verge of being arrogant, whereas The Shield (and pretty much everyone else that has interacted with Jordan, even his father, we mean, “father”) has been painted as these calm, mature ring veterans who get annoyed by Jordan’s zeal to be recognized. We like this story a lot, and we firmly believe this is going to get even better in the following weeks. Hell, there might be further storyline progress during the main event later on!</p>
<p>And damn on damn… Balor Club is FINALLY in motion. Two years late, no big deal. But at least the trio did collect a few titles over those couple of years to have some legitimate claim for supremacy.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3><strong>Needs More Seasoning</strong></h3>
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<p>Hey, no scuffles or interferences from Paige or Mickie James! Weird, right? There really is not too much to say about this match. The quality of the match was so-so; Rose and Deville were pitched against a duo that had experience teaming up with each other to mature their in-ring game. It was part of the typical three-on-three rivalry, and this was just a tag match that shuffles two out of three members of each team. Not bad, but nothing particularly outstanding, and we have seen this road trodden way too often. We realize that WWE are trying to create a back-and-forth situation between the babyface trio and Absolution, but we are concerned that Absolution will fall into the overloaded category of “teams that are dominant at first but fizzles out and becomes jobbers” (looking at you, Nexus). Please don’t do it. Just, no. We want Paige.</p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<h3><strong>The Golden Mentor. And “Golden Fox”?</strong></h3>
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<p>We like how Goldust has been used the past couple of weeks. A wrestler like him would fit perfectly in the role of the supportive player for the fledgling guy, and that was exactly what he did. Typical, a bit mundane, but we could not think of many better ways to carry out the segment. Maybe bring back the 24K Studio and invite Bruno Mars. Oh and the Mixed Match Challenge, yay.</p>
<p><strong> </strong><strong> </strong></p>
<h3><strong>The Laugh-off</strong></h3>
<p>Run-of-the-mill squash match, and tonight Curt Hawkins was the punching bag for the debuting WOKEN Matt Hardy. At least the wrestlers involved in the feud were actually in the building. There must be some form of feud advancement different from taking turns talking on the titantron. WOKEN Matt was more aggressive than his usual, un-woken self, and he wants to become CHAMPION of the MULTIVERSE ahahaha…</p>
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<p>On a side note, Curt Hawkins suffered his first (televised at least) loss of 2018. Not bad, considering he had the same record as Samoa Joe.</p>
<p></p>
<h3><strong>Photo Frames, Watches, Sports Coats, and More.</strong></h3>
<p>YESSSSSS MIZ IS BACK! It is always good to type that one out. We have to admit, among us, some did not like Miz that much before November, but since he left, we all kind of missed his weekly rant. And damn it did he give us just that when he came back. This was a better-than-average promo of The Miz (note that the standard of his promos has been raised very high in 2017). There were interesting interactions between Bo Dallas and Curtis Axel, too, as they kind of competed against one another to see who had the better gifts for Miz to show him their appreciation.</p>
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<p>The promo served its purpose – a strong comeback message, picking up the momentum exactly where he left off, which was the Intercontinental Championship feud with Roman Reigns. Combining this with the added instability factor in Pseudo-Shield in the name of Jason Jordan, we strongly believe The Miz will enter WrestleMania 34 as the Intercontinental Champion. He might even walk out of it with the title, providing that Dallas and Axel do not break up by that time.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3><strong>A Crimson-faced Chicken-sh*t Champion</strong></h3>
<p>To start off, we are not going to even review the quality of Enzo Amore’s side of the match, at least not in a wrestling perspective, unless there is something exceptional. And tonight was not an exceptional match from Enzo. But what was noteworthy was that Enzo got busted open really badly, possibly from a rope-assisted enziguri by Cedric from the outside to Enzo, who was on the second rope 619-setup style.</p>
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<p>This match (the ending in particular) continued to build Enzo as a chicken-sh*t champion, but realistically speaking, we think Enzo made the right decision here. To his defense, he was barely recovering from his illness that prevented him from competing last week when he was supposed to. Moreover, he just had 200 pounds of flesh (read abs) and bone land right on one of his shins. And even better, he got busted open and his face was in velvet (though we doubt this was deliberate). So, Enzo got away with the championship for another day, and Cedric Alexander was disappointed big time (Remember, he had to win two triple threat matches and a singles match to get this opportunity).</p>
<p>Side-note: We particularly enjoyed the bit Enzo trash-talked about Cedric Alexander’s inability to achieve when he said teaming up with Goldust was the closest he could ever get to gold. We guess you could say Enzo’s trashtalking ability is…gold *ba-dum-tss*.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3><strong>Nia Jax Being Like Most Girls.</strong></h3>
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<p>Good, short segment of Nia Jax checking on Enzo Amore in the medic room, with two implications: Enzo’s (possibly kayfabe) injury prevented him from competing for some time, and the Ninzo train keeps on rolling.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>Angle with his Phone.</strong></p>
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<p>We usually enjoy Angle’s segments, since they would usually be packed full of matchmaking and major announcements. This one did just that. Now we know there will be a major star coming back for the women’s Royal Rumble match, The Bar vs Rollins and Jordan is set for the January cross-brand PPV, and we would have a match from The Bar later on. Oh and The Miz… He always knows how to shine, doesn’t he?</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>Titus Worldwide Raising The Bar.</strong></p>
<p>What a surprising win for Titus Worldwide! And this was actually a decent, relatively back-and-forth match. Damn, Dana Brooke looks naughty in that secretary outfit. Can this be a push of sorts for Titus Worldwide? Will the RAW Tag Team Championship match at Royal Rumble be a Triple Threat? Did we mention how hot Dana Brooke looked in that secretary outfit?</p>
<p></p>
<h3><strong>*Insert Big Stuff Here*</strong></h3>
<p>This was one of Paul Heyman’s better promos, with extra fire (no pun intended) added after his client got chokeslammed the week prior by Kane. The promo was your typical Heyman monologue about how Brock Lesnar is the baddest dude in WWE.</p>
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<p>Even though we knew there would be some brawling happening (it seems to be a must-have now whenever there is Braun Strowman or Brock Lesnar involved), we still thoroughly enjoyed it. Braun Strowman was the star of the segment, hands down. Goddamn it, look at the way he slammed that road case around and treated Kane – known as The Big Red Machine, and Brock Lesnar – known as The Beast Incarnate, as FRICKING RAGDOLLS! And what is Brauns bicep warm-up for tonight? Pulling down a ten-foot tall, ten-foot wide scaffold, of course. You have got to love the Monster Among Men.</p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<h3><strong>Samoa Joe Set His Sight on Ferdinand</strong></h3>
<p>The match between Rhyno and Samoa Joe itself was not anything out of the normal squash match to highlight Samoa Joe’s dominance (though we are a bit sad to see a legend like Rhyno being relegated to such duties – but we guess time changes everything, huh?).</p>
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<p>What happened after the match was what made us interested. It was not Samoa Joe’s justification of his loss the previous week, and it was not even Joe’s usage of the word “pyrrhic” (We over here are such a huge fan of fancy words). What caught our attention the most was Samoa Joe’s particular vendetta against John Cena. He announced himself for the Rumble, but as far as we could tell, he would just go straight at Cena. Cena vs Joe at WrestleMania 34 – book it Vince!</p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<h3><strong>Five Feet of Japanese</strong></h3>
<p>This was a very, very quality backstage segment from Nia Jax and Alexa Bliss, with a focus on Bliss. She exposed herself here as a person that only “exploited” Nia for her own benefits – Bliss did not want to face Asuka at WrestleMania, since she knew Asuka could beat her. She tried to oil up Nia, but still could not get past Nia. Great attention to detail from WWE, slowly building up layers of reasons to the disintegration of the “friendship” between Bliss and Jax. By the way, we cannot help but notice that Jax who had slowly turned from a not-like-most-girls monster to a sensitive, caring lady, who would bring chicken soup and soda to a bedridden friend at the hospital in the first day of New Year. Oh wait, she actually did that.</p>
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<p>Another short and sweet segment on Monday Night RAW, during which, Nia Jax attacked Asuka while she was posing on the corner turnbuckles before her match that was supposed to happen. Just now, Bliss encouraged Jax to take out Asuka, but Jax made it clear that if she did attack Asuka, it would not be because Bliss told her so. The assault solidified Nia’s volition, and established the bad-girl position of Nia Jax in her feud with Asuka.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3><strong>Not a Good Fit.</strong></h3>
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<p>See, we told you there would be further complications in the Jason Jordan – Shield storyline on this edition of RAW (Hey, technically that was not a spoiler – we did use the modal verb “might”). Jordan continued to let anger get the better of him when he went to avenge Gallows, costing the team a crucial tag that could have changed the outcome of the match. This further showed Jordan as a liability in the tag team with Rollins, and in Pseudo-Shield as a whole. We have to give it to Jordan – his character work has been nothing but great lately. Jason Jordan could be a very interesting twist in the Reigns – Miz Intercontinental Championship feud, if done correctly. And judging from the huge “One more time!” chant after The Mix did a Stone-Crushing Finale on Reigns, Miz could actually be the fan favorite heading into their bout at RAW’s 25<sup>th</sup> Anniversary show.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3><strong>Overall Review: </strong></h3>
<p>This was a quality offering from the red brand, with many stories being further advanced, most notably being the Jordan – Shield situation, the Miz – Reigns feud, the Bliss – Jax “friendship” and the Kane – Strowman – Lesnar feud. Jordan continued to craft his character, Miz had new things in his wardrobe, and Strowman destroyed items, so all was well. Most of the matches and segments had meaning to them, although we would say there was little storyline progress regarding Absolution vs Babyfaces after the Bayley/Banks vs Rose/Deville tag match.</p>
<p>We feel like the lack of storyline in women’s matches is going to be a concurrent theme here, since there is an almost exact situation happening in Smackdown. This lack of direction is not the best way to go, seeing that the much-advertised first-ever Women’s Royal Rumble match will be happening in two weeks’ time. That is a problem I have with the shows, but right now, I am content with having The Miz back on Monday Night RAW.</p>

WWE Monday Night RAW Review & Results: January 8th 2018

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