Monday Night Raw Review - January 26, 2026

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

AJ Styles Accepted World Heavyweight Champion CM Punk's Challenge

I'm convinced that fans online willed this into existence, as there was a lot of chatter coming out of Styles' great match with Shinsuke Nakamura at Saturday Night's Main Event that Styles' "retirement tour" (if this is indeed it for him) wouldn't be complete unless he faced Punk one-on-one at least once on WWE TV. Well, they made it official here for the main event and I couldn't be happier that they did. It was a simple segment, but it accomplished what it needed to and the crowd responded really well to it.

WWE Women's Tag Team Champions RHIYO and Women's World Champion Stephanie Vaquer def. The Judgment Day (Roxanne Perez, Liv Morgan and Raquel Rodriguez)

The women are really running Judgment Day at this point and it's cool to see. Not only do all three of them have strong chemistry with each other, they had strong chemistry with their opponents here as well. This was a well-paced, enjoyable outing with the right team going over. We found later on that Vaquer will defend her Women's World Championship against Rodriguez in a Street Fight on next week's Raw.

Adam Pearce Announced The Vision for the Men's Royal Rumble Match; Austin Theory def. Rey Mysterio

The storyline with Pearce, Paul Heyman and the rest of The Vision has progressed nicely over the last few weeks. We have yet to find out who Pearce was on the phone with (I'm not sure we ever will), but the culmination of the angle was him giving everyone in The Vision (sans Heyman, of course) spots in the Rumble. I'm surprised none of them (specifically Breakker) weren't named the 30th entrant, though. The subsequent match between Theory and Mysterio was good and Theory picking up the win was important in getting him back on track. Hopefully Mysterio's injury isn't too serious and he can still take part in the Rumble.

Michael Cole Hosted a Sit-Down Interview with Gunther

It was wise to use the backstage/pre-taped approach to this because it came off that much better. Both guys did well in their respective roles but especially Gunther, who even teased putting Cole out to pasture. Cole has improved immensely over the years, but honestly, I wouldn't mind that at all. In all seriousness, this was an effective way of further hyping up his Career Threatening match with Styles on Saturday.

Alpha Academy (Akira Tozawa and Otis) def. The Creed Brothers, The New Day, and Bravo Americano & Rayo Americano in a World Tag Team Championship No. 1 Contender's Fatal 4-Way Tag Team Match

This marked The Creed Brothers' first televised match (not counting Main Event) since last summer. That's ridiculous, and Chad Gable getting injured isn't an excuse for these guys not being featured in his absence. Unfortunately, they ate the loss here, but I can't say I was shocked by that. The match was perfectly fine, but it did showcase the depth issues with Raw's tag team division at the moment. Alpha Academy winning made sense following their recent backstage segment with Jey Uso.

World Heavyweight Champion CM Punk vs. AJ Styles Ended in a No Contest

I love that the title was on the line. I didn't think Styles would actually win, but it did make the match more meaningful. Although this fell below my (admittedly) lofty expectations, it was still surreal to see them sharing the ring in a singles capacity, so I thought it was an entertaining main event for what it was despite feeling a bit lethargic (the quiet crowd didn't help, either). Finn Balor running in for the disqualification was disappointing, but it did play into what Punk told Balor earlier in the evening backstage. I assume this means Punk and Balor will be running it back at Elimination Chamber next month.

Overall Show

WWE's build for the Royal Rumble event on the whole this year has been rather weak, but this was a solid go-home show on the Raw side of things. The show-long story with Punk, Styles and Balor was excellent, and as noted, I'm glad we got Punk vs. Styles at all. The rest of the show held my interest and built toward the Rumble in addition to setting stuff up for after the pay-per-view.

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