WWE RAW 1/13/2025: 3 Things We Hated And 3 Things We Loved

Welcome to Wrestling Inc.'s weekly review of "WWE Raw," the show that debuted a potentially huge new star and crowned the first-ever women's Intercontinental Champion, and yet was main-evented by a rematch from the Bad Blood undercard! Yes, we're talking about it  — we're talking about all those things in this column, which exclusively covers things about the show that drew a particular degree of passion from the WINC staff. There are other things that happened (CM Punk, Seth Rollins, and Drew McIntyre all declaring for the Royal Rumble match, for example) that we're not talking about in this column, but that you can learn about via our "Raw" results page if you want/need to.

With that in mind, let's get to our opinions on the second episode of the Netflix Era, which was also the first episode of the Penta Era! Here are three things we hated and three things we loved about the 1/13/25 episode of "WWE Raw."

As Michael Cole said on air, Penta's debut was WWE's worst kept secret, and after months of speculation, the former AEW star made his WWE debut against Chad Gable. His match was the first of the night. He got a flashy entrance that showed off his new logo. He did his patented "Penta Walk" down the ramp. His family were seated ringside with his daughter in tears. The San José crowd was familiar with his game and gave him a loud welcome. He then went on to have a great debut match where he showcased the Penta Driver and a Destroyer. He picked up his first win, then immediately addressed the crowd, declaring that not only is it Netflix's new era, "it's Penta's new era!"

Following his match, both WWE stars and former colleagues from AEW posted messages of congratulations (except Bronson Reed, who compared him to La Parka in a non-complementary way). His brother, Rey Fénix posted a heartfelt message. Paul Levesque posted a video doing "the point" and "Cero Miedo". On his first night in the company, Penta was presented as a big star from his entrance to his post match comments to official posts from WWE and Netflix. His merch includes a Penta mask, something AEW fans long wanted.

Thus far, WWE have set Penta up to be a big deal. Hopefully they follow through.

Written by Samantha Schipman

When GUNTHER said that Jey Uso wasn't on his level during Monday's episode of "WWE Raw," I understood what he meant. GUNTHER and Uso are not nearly on the same level. The difference in how they are presented is night and day; GUNTHER invokes the stoicness of ancient wrestlers, with incredible mat work and sheer power to back his 163-day reign. Uso has catchphrases and merchandise options as flashy as his moveset. Next to GUNTHER, Uso feels like he is all style and no substance next. Plastic shades do not last for long.

Uso took off his shades, and in his eyes we see the struggle that is, perhaps, more grounded than GUNTHER's raw ring work. Uso's eyes reflected very real fears back at us: the fear of a new, uncertain endeavor, the fear of ambition, the fear of flying too close to the sun, only to catastrophically fall. Uso took off the shades — took off the carefree mask — and cut one of the best promos he's done in recent memory.

That opening was a little melodramatic, but it fits for this new side of Uso. Uso is absolutely over — just take a look at the merchandise sales, or the hundreds of thousands of people chanting "YEET" during his entrances — but there was always something holding him back from being a legitimate main eventer like his nickname would suggest, even when he held singles gold during his brief stint as the Intercontinental Champion. There was not enough raw emotion to hold onto. There were not enough stakes in his storylines — and if there were, they were not nearly high enough to break the ceiling he found himself imposed under.

After GUNTHER called him just a good tag team wrestler, that changed, and Uso got candid. Uso's shift was perfect — not melodramatic, but as realistic as stage acting can get. Everything, from his change in body language to his cadence, pointed to a more serious Jey Uso. He sounded desperate during this segment, but not in a bad way. He sounded desperate like his desire for singles gold — to be acknowledged as a singles competitor — was so raw, it hurt. His desperation was a sign of the higher stakes going into this championship match; this match is his way of breaking out of his past restrictions to blossom into an authentic, truly authentic, babyface. Even if it was only for a moment, Uso's panic-fuelled determination gave a completely new dimension to his typically carefree persona. It was so awesome to see the extent of Uso's dramatic capabilities.

I do feel bad that Uso is going to get fed to GUNTHER at Saturday Night's Main Event after that rousing promo, but I do think it is a sign of good things to come. If he can continue tugging at our heartstrings and showing us his elevated acting capabilities, we should be on track for a serious, legitimate Uso world title reign. Plastic shades do not last for long, but heartfelt promos do.

Written by Angeline Phu

In a match that certainly should have been the main event of the show, Lyra Valkyria became the inaugural Women's Intercontinental Champion with a win over another more-than-worthy contender in Dakota Kai. When a wrestling company introduces an Intercontinental title, it's immediately expected to be a worker's title, a proving ground to sift through those bound for the world title picture and give an added stake to the undercard of the division. That was exemplified both by the tournament as a whole as well as the final, with Kai and Valkyria standing at opposite ends of the spectrum within the same class of worker; Kai, a veteran with the company albeit with "NXT" and having yet to really break through until recently, and Valkyria, a promising "NXT UK" import coming through the ranks in the past couple of years.

I'll admit that as a fan, I was rooting for Kai to finally break her singles duck in WWE, but I also couldn't be any sort of disappointed with Valkyria's win. It was a good feeling to see yet another WWE PC graduate make their mark on the main roster relatively early, especially with the talent and potential she possesses, and it was done in a way that showed great respect to Kai as a contender even in defeat. It can be argued that a mere moment of ring awareness with Valkyria rolling out of the ring saved her night, with the story told that Kai had simply overextended herself looking for the finish and got caught. That's been the precipice of plenty of rematches across combat sports and it's a good one to draw from in the future. We've already seen on "SmackDown" how a secondary singles title provides an additional spotlight to a frankly stacked roster, and with "Raw" insisting upon being a lengthy show it certainly isn't going to hurt to have the same. If it means there is more time for the women's wrestlers to be afforded the time to be wrestlers, and not a box-ticking exercise or a side-act, then this match was the beginning of something truly great, and if nothing else it was a damn fine performance.

Written by Max Everett

Everyone loves a good surprise appearance of a wrestler in WWE on a brand that they aren't part of, but when there's absolutely no point of doing it other than the sake of doing it and there are other things that a star should be focusing on in their own brand, it then becomes an extremely nonsensical move. Both of these latter two statements are true in the case of Nia Jax's appearance on "Raw".

With Tiffany Stratton having just cashed in her Women's Money In The Bank briefcase to dethrone Jax as WWE Women's Champion just a little over a week ago, there is no reason for Jax to be on "Raw" getting into meaningless verbal altercations with the likes of Rhea Ripley and Bayley. This is a point that becomes all the more confusing when you take into consideration that Ripley was barely involved in the segment and that Bayley is also a member of "SmackDown", meaning she and Jax could've had this segment over on Friday nights. Yes, it's always nice to have a hometown hero make their return with "Raw" being in Bayley's hometown of San Jose and WWE is trying to cement the idea of the transfer window in the minds of fans, but there was no reason for this segment to take up several minutes of the show at all. It not only felt incredibly out of place and changed the pacing of the show to the point it never fully seemed to be able to regain throughout the rest of the show, but it also took away from Ripley's moment to celebrate dethroning Liv Morgan as Women's World Champion last week. Nothing about this segment made sense, making it a boring and pointless affair to watch.

Written by Olivia Quinlan

It has been about a week since WWE made its Netflix debut, and while WWE would have you believe that this monumental broadcasting deal is the best thing to happen to the company, the Netflix jump leaves much to be desired in terms of, you know, actual broadcasting.

Depending on what Netflix plan you have (and even that's a theory, I don't know why this happened), you may or may not have been subjected to advertisement breaks at certain times. Advertisements are annoying, but they're a financial and cultural staple of any broadcast — that's not what I have an issue with. My issue is with Netflix's unregulated implement of advertisements. By offering some viewers advertisements while allowing others to view the broadcast uninterrupted, there is a significant chance that certain viewers may be blocked from story-developing segments and match beats.

For most of the night, the advertisement placements were odd and a bit annoying to communicate over, with one part of our writing team having an advertisement break while others didn't, but there were not huge storytelling beats there were missed. It does kind of suck that we missed some interviewers from less-featured wrestlers, but those were primarily character-building moments, and not super impactful in the grand scheme of "WWE Raw's" ongoing feuds. What was really troubling was Netflix's odd advertisement break when it came to Damian Priest and Finn Balor's street fight in the show's main event, where some fans saw Balor get loaded on a stretcher while others were watching targeted chicken shop ads.

While the specifics of Netflix's advertisement procedures for different plans — again, I'm guessing it's due to a plan; the lack of transparency is kind of shady — are currently unclear, it does suck that a certain portion of fans are not able to watch such a major match beat happen in real time. If you didn't fill out some weird, undisclosed Netflix criteria you wouldn't have known why everyone else in your friend group was freaking out about Priest killing Balor (exaggeration) until you got back from the break to watch a replay clip. The emotions that moment would have held in the moment are all but dissipated because you're not watching it happen in real time.

Let's put this in a real-world example: think of a title change happening at a house show. Only a select few are able to view that monumental, story-altering change in real time, because they, essentially, were lucky enough to be in the area when the title change happened. You wouldn't be upset at the house show itself, but you might be upset that that moment was not accessible to everyone when it happened, and that it was gatekept to essentially a random sample of people. That is what this Netflix advertisement inconsistency feels like. It's unfair at worst, messy at best, and overall far from the perfect broadcasting promise we were implored to believe with the grandiose, self-gratifying Netflix debut show WWE put on just a week ago.

Written by Angeline Phu

This is unusual for me, because nine times out of 10, I'm all about stipulation matches, especially more hardcore ones like a street fight, but the main event pitting Damian Priest against Finn Balor just wasn't for me. I felt like the match, even with its stretcher spot, just drug on and on, despite the show ending before 11 p.m. EST, and I'm certain that's because this is at least the third or fourth match we've seen between the pair. Judgment Day just needs to get over Priest, and over themselves, honestly, and just break up and go their separate ways. I'm sure we're in the beginnings of the end for the stable, now, but the fact this main evented this week instead of Lyra Valkyria and Dakota Kai duking it out to become the first-ever Women's Intercontinental Champion, is just super lame.

I found myself thinking, "Yeah, I've seen this spot before" all throughout the match, even with Priest's Falcon Arrow to send Balor crashing from a spot in the crowd to a few tables set up below. The commercials between American Netflix and all other versions kind of ruined this, too, as we didn't get to see Balor being loaded onto the stretcher and put in a neck brace initially. Sure, we came back to it, but it just didn't have the same effect. Priest running the stretcher down to the ring and Balor just kind of rolling back in was a nice visual, but from there, it was more of the same. The Judgment Day's Carlito and JD McDonagh came out to attack Priest, then the War Raiders came out to even the odds and drive Carlito and McDonagh back. Priest got the victory off a second South of Heaven, with a chair wrapped around his head, which was another cool visual, but I found myself being more relieved that the match (and hopefully the feud) was over.

With WWE being in its "Netflix Era," it would have been really cool to showcase the newest women's championship in a top spot, since both last week's opening match and main event were highlighted by the men. Yes, Rhea Ripley won the championship back from Liv Morgan, but that was yet another match we've seen over and over again. The Valkyria and Kai match was fresh and new, and it would have fit in well as the main event, and could have made the show a bit shorter, with Balor and Priest moved to next week. I'm sure that's a lot of talk of booking my own shows in my brain, simply to say, I'm so glad the feud between Priest and Balor, plus the Judgment Day, is finally over. Now, just let Judgment Day implode quickly, and we can all move on into fresher stories in 2025.

Written by Daisy Ruth