WWE Monday Night Raw and NXT Double Review Special: 12/13 January

Linus O'Howell
3 days ago
5 min read

Hello everyone! As you may have seen, I haven’t released any articles over the past week (besides the two from today) as I went on holiday and decided to take a break for the first time since I started this site back in August of 2022! So, as a result, I decided to do a special combined article covering this week’s editions of both Monday Night Raw and NXT! Now, I won’t go into as much detail as I usually would, but I thought we’d still recap certain things so we’re fully up to date heading into tonight’s Friday Night SmackDown in London!

Monday Night Raw: 12/01

This week’s edition of Monday Night Raw kicked off with RHIYO celebrating becoming the brand-new WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions, only for both The Judgment Day and Bayley and Lyra Valkyria to interrupt! The first match of the night then saw Je’Von Evans take on Rayo Americano, with Je’Von picking up the win to start his Main Roster career off with a win! CM Punk then cut a promo about how he feels that as long as the crowd is behind him, he can hold onto the World Heavyweight Championship forever! This brought out Finn Balor, who’d been given a bit of a bold statement from both Liv Morgan and Roxanne Perer earlier in the night, to challenge Punk to a Championship match; a contest that will take place next week in Belfast, Northern Ireland!

Bayley and Lyra Valkyria, The Judgment Day, and The Kabuki Warriors were fighting next in a Number 1 Contender’s match to face RHIYO for the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championships at the upcoming Saturday Night’s Main Event show in Canada! This match was pretty competitive, with all three teams coming close to being victorious, but in the end, Liv Morgan scored the win for The Judgment Day after nailing Kairi Sane with an ObLIVion! Raquel Rodriguez continued The Judgment Day’s momentum by once again attacking Stephanie Vaquer after an interview, before Alpha Academy challenged The Usos to a match for the World Tag Team Championships after Maxxine Dupri told Otis and Akira Tozawa that it’s now their time to shine! The Vision then took on Penta and Dragon Lee in Tag Team action, with Bronson Reed and Austin Theory looking good together! However, this match didn’t end clean as Bron Breakker showed up and wrecked Lee with a vicious-looking SPEAR! Now, earlier in the show, Adam Pearce had told Paul Heyman that he wouldn’t stand for any nonsense from Bron, meaning Pearce snapped over The Vision’s actions! Breakker then put his hands on Pearce, resulting in the Raw General Manager suspending The Badass, but as Paul Heyman rightly pointed out, it was Adam who touched Bron first!

The Main Event of this week’s edition of Monday Night Raw, live from Düsseldorf, Germany, saw AJ Styles go one-on-one with Gunther! These are two of the greatest Professional Wrestlers of all time, so it was always going to be cool to see! The match itself was strong, and the ending was terrific! See, Gunther tapped out, resulting in AJ letting go, but because of the angle, the referee didn’t see it! This allowed The Ring General to take advantage, nailing Styles to get the win! This was so clever, because Gunther knew exactly what he was doing: this was a masterstroke! On top of that, you could also look at it as Gunther once again mocking John Cena, which is genius!

Standouts: Gunther/Bron Breakker

NXT: 13/01

After showing a recap of New Year’s Evil, this week’s edition of NXT started with Ava announcing the future of the NXT Championship! On February 3rd, there will be a 6-Man Ladder Match to determine the brand-new Champion, with qualifying matches to take place to determine the lineup over the next couple of weeks! Ricky Saints wasn’t impressed with this, as he believed he was going to be handed the NXT Title back, and this segment ended with Evolve’s Keanu Carver destroying the field! The first match of the night then saw Lola Vice look to put Kelani Jordan in her place, with this being a pretty decent match! Kelani tried to cheat to win, but this ultimately led to her downfall, with the referee catching her before Lola nailed Lani with a backfist to score the win!

The next match saw Tavion Heights challenge Jasper Troy for the NXT Speed Championship, with this match lasting just over 4 minutes! Just like usual, this was pretty missable, with Troy comfortably retaining (I’m really not sure what this did for Heights)! Ava then confirmed that Fatal Influence, ZaRuca, and the WreNQCC will fight next week for the right to challenge for the TNA Knockouts Tag Team Championships, before Myles Borne made it clear to Mr. Stone that he needs to be in one of those qualifying matches! Ethan Page was then told that if he wants to be in the NXT Championship match, he has to give up his NXT North American Title, before Blake Monroe made it clear that she’s just miles better than anyone else on the roster! This brought out a returning Jaida Parker, who dropped Monroe to the delight of the NXT Universe! I very much see Miss Parker becoming NXT Women’s Champion this year!

The second Championship match of the night saw Channing “Stacks” Lorenzo put his TNA International Title on the line against Shiloh Hill, with Stacks successfully retaining his gold after plenty of interference from Arianna Grace! Izzi Dame then arrived to celebrate becoming the brand-new NXT Women’s North American Champion, with Izzi stating that she didn’t stumble into success: she paved her path to it! Tatum Paxley then arrived to scream at Dame over stealing her opportunity, before she decided to headbutt a referee! As a result, Paxley was kicked out of the building! Ricky Saints then confirmed that he’s already in the NXT Championship Ladder matches, with two qualifying matches taking place next week, whilst Lexis King needed to have an important conversation with Stacks and Arianna Grace!

After The Vanity Project confirmed that they’ve officially signed NXT contract, the Main Event of this week’s edition of NXT saw Joe Hendry go one-on-one with Dion Lennox in a No Disqualification Match! This was a decent match, with OTM and DarkState squabbling on the outside (and sometimes inside the ring) on multiple different occasions! Dion Lennox was then ready to hit Joe Hendry with a steel chair, only for him to get smashed in the back (with a different steel chair) by Tony D’Angelo of all people! Tony D then decided to also lay waste to Joe, before D’Angelo placed Hendry on top of Lennox, meaning the former TNA World Champion ended up victorious! I really liked this ending; it was very clever, and the show closing with a standoff between D’Angelo and Ava was strong!