WWE Raw Results and Recap: Strange bedfellows (December 25th, 2017)

Ambrose's understudy

Over in defeat

The "other" divisions

Quick hits

• For a show that was meant to be a placeholder, there were a lot of excellent little moments that brought me a lot of joy. Either WWE is doing something right, or maybe the festive joy and eggnog hit me a little hard.

• Rhyno trying to get Heath Slater to "toughen up" could provide a lot of comedy - lord knows they proved they're more than capable of it while they were on SmackDown. Slater's match against Kane went almost exactly as you'd expect, though Heath was at least allowed a little sliver of offense before a stiff shot and a chokeslam laid him out. Rhyno shouting at Heath "show your kids how tough you are" was a perfect little addition
• The real MVPs of tonight: the couple who held up a sign during the Kane/Slater match reading "Don't you have mayor stuff to do?"
• It's nice when you get a sense of continuity, and little throwbacks tonight - from Seth Rollins saying that teaming with Jason Jordan was to pay back Kurt for teaming with him and Ambrose during TLC, to Curt Hawkins bringing up his then-146 match losing streak - really do bring cohesiveness to this kayfabe world the show inhabits
• Nice to see you get in the festive mood with the red attire there, Finn
• Bwoken Matt Hardy (I couldn't decide between Broken and Woken) sneak-attacking Bray Wyatt shows that Hardy is more than just a madman who plays chess against goldfish, though I would have liked to had a promo that was more than just "HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH"
• The Miztourage did fine, fine work tonight, whether it was regaling members of the Raw locker room with Mizmas carols, or being destroyed by Braun Strowman. Special mention to Titus O'Neil being terrified by Goldust after the regifting of the Santa's Little Helper DVD
• C'mon WWE. Bringing back Dash and Dawson last week just to leave them off TV this week? Someone found a lump of coal in their stocking for that
• Expecting a placeholder show, I decided to count how many video recaps and packages there were tonight (and, quick sidenote, you can try and retcon all you want - we're not going to forget that James Ellsworth was the one who took down the briefcase in the first women's Money in the Bank match). Not including the package of the 1-2-3 Kid's shock victory over Razor Roman, which we'll forgive as part of the build to the 25th anniversary of Raw, I counted seven.

Results