The good, bad, and ugly from this week’s episode of WWE Raw

Heydorn’s Raw Receipt 1/20/25

The good, bad, and ugly from this week’s episode of WWE Raw.

-The Jey Uso entrance doesn’t get old. I know, his matches haven’t really delivered on an upper tier level, but his star power in WWE right now is something else.

-Jey’s promo with Gunther this week was effective as a final chapter ahead of their match at Saturday Night’s Main Event over the weekend, but it wasn’t a particularly memorable one. Jey fought off Gunther and held up the world title belt. We’ve seen this before throughout history and rarely does an angle like that payoff with the challenger actually winning. Sorry, Jey.

-JBL was cheered this year. Loudly cheered. 2025 is bizarre.

-WWE hasn’t done much right with The New Day heel turn since it went down a few weeks back. Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods had all the momentum in the world and they’ve been neutralized by trolling, semi-heel behavior. They really needed the book behind them to push them as a winning team that figured it out thanks to the turn. Now, they’re kind of a joke and not taken seriously. The rollup loss to Rey Mysterio this week doesn’t help either and feuding with the LWO outside of Mysterio doesn’t scream “hey, we’re a top a team.”

-Chad Gable, The Creed Brothers, and Ivy Nile are the goofiest faction in all of WWE. They try hard to be taken seriously, but how can you when Brutus acts the way he does during promos. The group is all over the place and nobody knows how to react. So, nobody really does.

Chef’s kiss

-A chef’s kiss to the Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens promo segment this week. Bravo to both men. This was compelling, dramatic, and it furthered interest in not only the Royal Rumble match — which continues to get more competitive — but, the WWE Undisputed Championship Match also. Owens totally gaslit Zayn when praising him and Zayn was able to react to that in a way that told the audience he knew what was going on. At the same time, Owens was too self-absorbed to see that Zayn wasn’t buying it. Fun stuff and while a Zayn vs. Owens title match certainly isn’t happening at WrestleMania, this story is another angle the Royal Rumble match itself can play off of on February 1.

-Nia Jax and Bayley had a pretty good Nia Jax Match. We all know the formula for that one. Bayley gets a quick upper hand, Jax squashes it, Bayley comes back, almost gets the job done, fights from underneath, and doesn’t win. Its a formula that works for Jax and reinventing the wheel for no reason is silly.

-Didn’t we just do Rhea Ripley vs. Nia Jax? I know they haven’t, but it feels like we just saw all of this between those two. The brawl was fun, but I just don’t get the sense that fans are excited for this match again.

The Women’s Intercontinental Championship needs TV time

-Huh. No in-ring appearance for Lyra Valkyria this week? A missed opportunity. Valkyria really needed to be out there talking about her win, shining up the fact that she was the first champion ever, and setting the table for what her title run would be like. The video package attempted that, but she needs time in front of the crowd to build a relationship with them.

-Penta does it again. Not as good as last week, but really solid nonetheless. The crowd was firmly behind him and his natural charisma radiates with the WWE polish.

-As I said last week, CM Punk is finding his groove on the microphone and this week was a perfect example of that groove. Punk was excellent. He was compelling, confident, likable, and a character with a clear mission. The dig at Hogan ruled and Punk is the perfect guy for WWE to do that with.

WrestleMania rematch

-A strong and long main event between Seth Rollins and Drew McIntyre. WWE showed both backstage throughout the show and did enough to give the match in-show hype. They tore it down. Good near falls and counters throughout. A little surprised to see Rollins get the win because Drew has been such a focus, but he needed one after the loss to Punk. The angle between Rollins and Zayn at the end gives WWE yet another story to play off of during the Royal Rumble match. Thumbs up.