Monday Night Raw Review - January 15, 2024

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

Drew McIntyre Interrupted Cody Rhodes

With Rhodes now having finished his feud with Shinsuke Nakamura, he can firmly focus on winning the Royal Rumble. He's certainly a front-runner along with CM Punk, so I'm looking forward to seeing them go face-to-face next week. In the meantime, we got this excellent exchange from Rhodes and McIntyre, where they acknowledged their history as partners and as rivals and explained why they need to win the Rumble. I enjoyed McIntyre's face-off with Punk last week slightly more, but this was still strong stuff.

#DIY def. The Judgment Day (JD McDonagh and Dominik Mysterio)

Slowly but surely, #DIY are getting over with the audience and that's super encouraging. They've always been a talented team, but they need more opportunities to show what they could do, like they did here. This was a fun match and the crowd was behind them by the end. There was no announcement as to when they'll challenge for the Undisputed WWE Tag Team Championship, but it could easily happen at the Royal Rumble if not on Raw soon after.

Candice LeRae and Indi Hartwell def. Chelsea Green and Piper Niven

Was this the first win LeRae and Hartwell have scored on TV together? If so, it's about time, but it's still going to take much more than this for fans to start caring about them and the other teams in the division. I've always been a big fan of The Way, so I hope this push pans out for them. The match was decent. The idea should be to build them up for a tag title opportunity at Elimination Chamber, which will emanate from Hartwell's home country of Australia.

Xavier Woods Interrupted Imperium; Ludwig Kaiser def. Woods by Disqualification

This marked Gunther's first appearance on Raw in about a month due to being on paternity leave (congrats to The Ring General!). He officially declared himself for the men's Rumble and boasted about his dominance. Perhaps he'll be thrown out by Brock Lesnar this year to set up a WrestleMania match between the two? Woods also returned in this segment after a brief hiatus. His outing against Kaiser was standard stuff, but much like last week, the post-match angle with Kaiser and Woods brawling was well done. Woods got to show a more serious side and Kaiser furthered his feud with The New Day.

Akira Tozawa def. Ivar

Ivar beat Otis last week, so I assumed he'd follow that up with a straightforward win over Tozawa here. It was largely a squash until Tozawa scored some offense and the shock win. The crowd popped big, but Ivar and Valhalla stood tall over Tozawa and Maxxine Dupri afterward. This was simple, harmless booking to set up Ivar vs. Chad Gable (fellow Alpha Academy member) and Valhalla vs. Ivy Nile (a friend of Dupri) for next week.

Becky Lynch Interrupted Women's World Champion Rhea Ripley

Ripley was confronted Nia Jax last week, so it made total sense for Lynch to do the same here. They were absolutely planting the seeds for a WrestleMania match, I have no doubt about that. This was a really good segment with both women playing their roles extremely well. Of course, Lynch is established, but she still feels like the underdog in a way and I can't wait to get more promo exchanges from them. I'd just have Lynch win an Elimination Chamber match to set it up and not the women's Rumble.

Undisputed WWE Tag Team Champions The Judgment Day (Finn Balor and Damian Priest) def. R-Truth and The Miz (Non-Title)

Truth mentioned in a recent interview that Priest was the one who went to bat for him and had this storyline stretched out. Bless Priest for that because it's been one of the best parts of Raw in the last month. I have no idea how they intend to pay it off, mind you, but it's been a blast so far and the crowd ate this up, too. It would have been easy for Miz to get pinned, but I'm glad it was Truth, who may second-guess wanting to join Judgment Day after this.

Shayna Baszler and Zoey Stark def. Natalya and Tegan Nox

I applaud Triple H's effort to get the masses to care about the women's tag team division, but it's a tall task. Current champs Katana Chance and Kayden Carter are getting over thanks to their innovative offense and increased exposure/mic time, but there isn't anything super special about the other teams in the division. This match simply existed. There was nothing technically wrong with it, but the crowd was quiet and it's hard to blame them.

World Heavyweight Champion Seth "Freakin" Rollins def. Jinder Mahal

I stand by what I said last week: Mahal had no business wrestling for the World Heavyweight Championship. Obviously, it would have been even more ridiculous had he won, but thankfully, that did not happen. This exceeded my expectations and the nearfalls down the end with Mahal nearly pinning Rollins were suspenseful. If you were wondering why Rollins sold the knee for a majority of the match and how it never amounted to anything, that's because it was a legitimate injury he suffered. Hopefully it's not too serious because what terrible timing that would be. At the very least, I'd assume Rollins won't be working the Royal Rumble pay-per-view, which may have been the original plan, anyway.

Overall Show

WWE is doing an effective job with the Royal Rumble build so far and planting the seeds for storylines we're bound to be getting on the road to WrestleMania. It's a vast improvement over the random filler we tend to get every year during Rumble season. There wasn't anything terribly exciting about this episode (especially considering it was headlined by a Jinder Mahal match), but it was a middle-of-the-road show on the whole.

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