Monday Night Raw Review (1/6/2025)

It is back! The Right Hook weekly reviews are back but I am going to attempt to do this a bit differently. Instead of trying to cram everything on one weekly review, I am going to try to do one or two shows for each review (Raw & NXT, Dynamite & Smackdown) and drop them throughout the week and see how this works. So, let us begin with the much-anticipated Monday Night Raw debuting on Netflix with what I like and what I did not like from this groundbreaking episode.

Monday Night Raw 1/6/2025

Likes

Right away the cold open video was excellent, Triple H being the hype man in these moments is evergreen welcoming us to the Netflix was the right way to kick the show off. The celebrity fans were a good touch throughout the show (except for Bill Simmons for some reason) but felt like the start of the Netflix Era.

Roman Reigns vs. Solo Sikoa as the opening match was a good call, while the match itself was a paint by numbers Bloodline match, it had crowd into it especially when Reigns won the match after some run-ins to regain the ula fala. After appearing before the match, The Rock came back out to put the Ula Fala on Reigns for a nice but awkward moment.

John Cena’s appearance was another awesome moment, while I still have not wrapped my around this is the farewell tour his promo made it realistic and something I want to see. After being cheesy about breaking the record, Cena declared to enter the Royal Rumble and win in order to break his long losing streak and capture a world championship one more so the Royal Rumble already is high stakes with that announcement.

The main event absolutely delivered, set the bar for main event/big matches in 2025. Punk and Rollins were excellent, hopefully this is not the only match between them this year because this can be another incredible series of matches between two of the best out there. Now to the parts of the show that were unforced errors to put it nicely.

Dislikes

While The Rock return to Monday Night Raw was great, the Final Boss was nowhere to be seen. From thanking Cody Rhodes for being a great WWE champion, to acknowledge Roman Reigns with the Ula Fala threw things off from his last appearance at WWE Bad Blood where he stared down Reigns and Rhodes. Now those potential matches could still happen this year but just was odd start for what is to come with the Great One/Final Boss in the WWE this year.

For a 3-hour debut show to have four matches and an in-ring segment seems ridiculous and hopefully it was just for this debut episode to feel like a PPV/PLE or old takeover. Going forward I hope that is not the case and it is a 2-hour show where there is more action and things to invest in while trying to grab new fans or bring back lapsed ones.

Jey Uso’s entrance is one of the cooler things in WWE, but Monday night it certainly lost some coolness when Travis Scott appeared and walked with main event Jey. Scott smoking a blunt halfway through the entrance was fine, certainly told us that Netflix may let some stuff slide on Monday Nights but Scott acting like a superfan along with Pat McAfee and Michael Cole being a little extra about bit felt a bit corny.

And now we get to the red & yellow elephant in the room, where once again Pat McAfee was doing his best being overexcited and exaggerated about everything but then Real American played, and the mood/vibe changed. Out came Hulk Hogan with Jimmy Hart behind him waving the stars and stripes to a smatter of boos and jeers, which I felt horrible for Jimmy Hart who looked genuinely confused then terrified by the spectacle in front of him as Hogan began to do his promo where the boos grew louder.

Just an absolute misfire having Hogan apart of the show, with his current comments and appearances in the political realm, his remarks about black people in the past and what has come from that, and his reputation with tall tales has made the biggest attraction and influence for pro wrestling fans into a pariah that people do not want to see or hear from anymore. Assuming there are some future appearances lined up for Hogan especially with the return of Saturday Night’s Main Event, may need reconsideration because the response  we saw on Monday night likely is going to be response anytime the Hulkster appears on WWE content going forward.