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It's a brand new year and there's hardly a better way to start it off right than by watching an episode of WWE Raw. This inaugural show of 2018 was highlighted by an excellent matchup featuring Samoa Joe vs Roman Reigns, yet struggled to find many other great moments.
Braun Strowman kept Powerslamming Heath Slater & Rhyno and Finn Balor teamed up with Gallows & Anderson, but that was most of the good stuff.
As for the botches and outrageous moments, WWE provided the usual lot. Matt Hardy discovered an extreme form of multiplication, Booker T blundered his words more than once, and Brock Lesnar flipped his title belt in an unintended tribute to a soon-returning Miz.
There was also a botch from WWE's current top ring announcer, which kicks off this countdown.
#5 Heath did not wrestle
The first feature of the night happened during this entrance. Braun Strowman was already in the ring, waiting for a match requested by Rhyno. According to the announcers, Rhyno wanted to show his buddy Heath Slater an example of toughness.
However, Jojo announced the competitors wrong. She stated Heath Slater as the participant in the match while Rhyno simply was there to accompany his buddy.
To her credit, they both walked out together to Heath Slater's theme song, so it's understandable that she thought he was wrestling. The graphic on screen was correctly labelled, as can be seen.
#4 A million Matt Hardys
After a shockingly hard-fought victory over Apollo Crews, Bray Wyatt watched Matt Hardy deliver a promo on the big screen above the entrance ramp. Not surprisingly, this Woken version of Matt found a way to come across far weirder than even he's made possible before now.
Matt told Bray that he was turning WWE into his Woken Universe. He stated that he would also delete Wyatt and name-dropped the infamous Sister Abigail. It was then that Hardy started doing that goofy laugh that he does, only this time we were given way more of it. The screen kept multiplying with his faces, until it was an army of tiny Hardy heads laughing.
Wyatt's confused reaction was totally appropriate here.
#3 Not a cruiserweight
When the top contender to Enzo Amore's Cruiserweight Championship needed a last-minute tag team partner to face off against Drew Gulak & Ariya Daivari, a slightly bigger than expected challenger answered the call.
Goldust teamed with Cedric Alexander, even though his billed weight of 232 pounds which far exceeds the 205 cap that the other three competitors adhere to.
Is it okay if we all just ignore the name and overall gimmick of the cruiserweight-exclusive show and let Goldust compete on 205 Live? He's horribly underutilised at the moment, so tagging him with random flippy guys on Tuesday nights is at least better than nothing. Give us more Goldust, please.
#2 Booker T was tongue-tied
Booker T, who's apparently now starting to get on Dave Meltzer's nerves, had a couple of noticeable bungles while taking up his commentary duties. The first occasion to highlight was this moment when he cracked up laughing after saying that Brock Lesnar will be fighting Brock Lesnar.
Book thought the idea of The Beast Incarnate fighting himself was uproariously funny, apparently.
Michael Cole faltered a couple of lines immediately before this but didn't let it derail him. That might have fed into Booker's outbreak of giggle fever. Also, while it's not highlighted in the above gif, Booker also claimed that Bo Dallas & Curtis Axel were both second generation wrestlers during their 6-man tag team match. The two are actually both third generation wrestlers.
#1 Upside down title
This final segment of the show kind of missed the mark on several levels. For starters, Paul Heyman's promo felt rushed and the entire segment didn't get a ton of time. Also, where was Braun?
Sure, he didn't seem interested in aligning with Kane based off of a backstage interaction earlier, but wouldn't he still want to scrap with his upcoming opponents at Royal Rumble?
After all of these shortcomings, Brock Lesnar then had a minor stumble with raising his Universal Title right before the credits aired. Perhaps he knew whose face was in the bottom right corner and he was actually excited about The Miz's return to Raw next week?
And maybe he wanted to flip the WWE logo to look like how The Miz does it to show how happy he was? It's okay Brock, I'm looking forward to his return, too.
