By Dan Skip Allen

Monday Night RAW has come back to the City Beautiful Orlando, Florida. The home of the performance center and the Triple A version of WWE, NXT. It’s the last RAW of 2025 and has a few title matches to ring in the new year. A lot of WWE Superstars call this city and its surrounding area their home, so it’s somewhat of a homecoming for quite a few members of the roster. As with the new year, there will be a lot of fireworks going off. The night started off with some dark matches that will air at a later date on a show called WWE Main Event.

The Dark Matches saw NXT female standout Nikkita Lyons, who hasn’t reached her full potential yet in WWE vs. Ivy Nile, a member of American Made, a group formed by Chad Gable even though he has been absent for a while now. Hopefully, he’ll come back soon because I miss him.  Nile got the win after she got Lyons to tap out from a submission move on her arm. It looked like an arm bar or some kind of arm submission. The second match was Bravo (Tyler Bate) from Los Americanos vs. LWO Joaquin Wilde. These two men had a feud going on from Triple AAA, the Mexican Federation that WWE bought. Bravo pulled off the win in this match between lower level superstars. This was just the appetizer to the main event.

The show opened with The Vision coming out to introduce their newest member, the man in disguise who finally revealed himself as none other than Austin Theory. He won his membership by helping The Vision win a tag team match the week prior on RAW. As often happens at the beginning of RAW, someone interrupts the opening proceedings. That someone is CM Punk, who has a World Championship Title defense on January 5th’s episode of RAW. He confronts Bron Breaker. They both have fantastic promos, which helps them set up next week’s World Heavyweight Title Match. Next week’s show is sure to be a crazy episode, especially since it’s the one year anniversary of Monday Night RAW on Netflix.

The first match of the night, surprising enough, is the Women‘s World Championship Triple Threat Match between Nikki Bella, one half of the Bella Twins. Her sister being Brie Bella, Raquel Rodriguez, of The Judgment Day, and reigning champion and fan favorite La Primera Stephanie Vaquer. Both Bella and Rodriguez give the champion a run for her money, but Vaquer fends off two game veteran performers who found out first hand how hard it was to dethrone this phenomenal champion from Chile. I think Vaquer will have a long run as a woman’s champion. You’d be hard pressed to see anybody better than her right now in the women’s division. 

Then there was a promo by the Kabuki Warriors in which Rhea Ripley & Iwo Skye came out and interrupted them.  A fight ensues between the four women with Ripley and Skye getting the better of the Tag Team Champions. This also will set up a championship match on January 5th.

The second match of the night was set up from and interview back stage between The Ring General Gunther and R Truth, who interrupted him and had some things to say about how Gunther has been besmirching the name of his friend John Cena who Gunther tapped out in his final match on Saturday Nights Main Event on December 13th. This match was over from the get-go, but I’ll admittedly say it lasted longer than even I thought it would. Gunther eventually choked out R Truth as I predicted a few moments earlier to my friend who was sitting next to me at the show. This is one of the best guys in the business right now, in my humble opinion.  He has been getting over so well ever since he came to the main roster a few years earlier. He is living up to the moniker, The World’s Best Wrestler, which Gunther was proclaimed as by R Truth backstage. He will get a title again very soon, I’m sure of it.

The third match of the evening is between great luchadore Ray Mysterio vs. Austin Theory, the newest member of The Vision with Logan Paul as his side. Ray puts up a good fight versus the bigger and stronger Theory but as The Vision will do Paul interferes and starts to put a beatdown on Mysterio but he had a plan and returning luchadore Penta comes out to aid Mysterio. I’m sure this will be something to watch for in the future. These two have been circling each other for months. I’m sure they have had matches outside of WWE, so I’m looking forward to seeing what this friendship has in store for the WWE universe. 

Another promo saw the Women’s Intercontinental Champion, Maxxine Dupri being interrupted by past IC Champion Becky Lynch. She insists she didn’t tap out the week before and wants a rematch next week on the January 5th Monday Night Raw. Which is stacking up to be a fantastic show on paper. Lynch has a good promo, but Dupre keeps up with her with some good barbs of her own. I’m just sick of this feud, and I want Jessica Carr, the WWE Referee, who moonlights as a Wrestler on her off days, versus Lynch feud to get going sooner rather than later. This had been building for months now as Carr has counted Lynch out, 1,2,3 more than a few times. 

The fourth and final match of the show was the World Tag Team Championship Match between current champions AJ Style & Dragon Lee vs. The Uso’s Jay & Jimmy. In a banger of a match, the eight time champions, the Uso Brothers once again win their Ninth Tag Team Titles. The previous champions had their fair share of moments in the match, but the popularity of the new champions was a little too much for anybody to overcome. This is where the Uso belonged because they are a great Tag Team. Hopefully, they have another long reign as Champions. 

All in all, Monday Night RAW from Orlando, Florida, on December 29th was a fun show. This show set up the big December 5th Anniversary episode next week with some big matches coming in seven days on that show. Stories have progressed, and I have a feeling new ones will start. I’ll be excited about that, and I look forward to the next time Monday Night RAW comes back to the Sunshine State. 

By Dan Skip Allen