WWE Day One (January 1st, 2022 PPV)

And so here we are. A new year is here and who better to kick off the year with a bang than WWE with their New Year's Day PPV?

Allegedly the brainchild of CEO Nick Khan - responsible for such wonderful WWE moments such as Miz getting eaten by zombies, Vince McMahon's egg stolen by Austin Theory, as well as the near hundred releases due to "budget cuts" during their most profitable months ever - the idea is for WWE to hold a PPV on New Year's Day going forward.

But before we get that far, let's check out this show first, which is billed as a "premium" live event instead of a PPV. Yeah... "premium." Whatever you say, pal.

Smackdown tag team champions The Usos defeated The New Day in the same match they always have to win the title. Usos vs. New Day is slowly becoming the John Cena vs. Randy Orton of the current generation; a match that has taken place so many times that it becomes boring and you end up getting sick and tired of seeing. They tried and it was a fine match, but I've already seen this shit countless times before. I don't need to see it again. Give me something new, WWE.

Drew McIntyre defeated some guy named Madcap Moss, who's dressed in a Hawaiian shirt of some kind and paired up with Baron Corbin in a funny hat. Well, it's something different. Now give me something that I can actually enjoy and call worthy of being on a "premium" program, WWE.

RAW Tag Team Champions Randy Orton and Matt Riddle (accompanied by some musical act whose name I don't recall) defeated The Street Profits in a perfectly acceptable wrestling match that isn't exactly premium caliber to retain the titles.

Edge defeated Miz in a thing that happened. Oh, the match was fine by Miz standards, but that's not saying much. Basically, what happened was that Maryse got involved and then Beth Phoenix shows up to nullify that advantage and allow Edge to finish Miz off. So I guess there's a mixed tag between the two couples down the road. Yippee.

RAW Women's Champion Becky Lynch defeated Liv Morgan to retain the title in a thing that happened... also that Becky graphic that they insert into the picture needs to fucking die in a fire because that is fucking hideous. And look, people can argue about the match being great and all. All I saw was Becky Lynch beating some random woman with no chance of losing her title and I didn't need to see the first match they had on RAW to get that.

Brock Lesnar defeated WWE Champion Big E, Bobby Lashley, Seth Rollins, and Kevin Owens in a five-way match to win the title. Lesnar was supposed to be facing Roman for the Blue Toy Belt, but Roman went down with COVID and thus Lesnar was inserted into this match... and ended Big E's run as champion, which hadn't been all that great from what I've heard. I hadn't seen the Twitter reaction, but I'd imagine it wasn't pleasant. Hey, it is what it is and as a match, it was a fairly short main event where everyone hit their big moves and Brock wrecked everyone.

And listen... I have no qualms about Brock winning the title here, especially if it means we might finally get Brock vs. Lashley at some point - some point being the Rumble, so good move there, folks - but the fact that this is what they came up with at the last minute shows the kind of desperation they had in trying to make this "premium" show worthwhile. Sucks for Big E that he didn't get a more meaningful run, but I don't think you need to be Nostradamus to see where this was going once you heard Brock was going to be in it. That said, I don't think Big E is going to be Kofi'ed; based on RAW this past week with Heyman putting the guy over in his promo, I think Big E is going to be fine, at least for the short term. Anything beyond that is definitely up in the air.

So that was WWE's attempt to ring in the new year with a New Year's Day PPV event that neither lived up to the premium moniker or even PPV standards. For all intents and purposes, this would've been a perfectly average episode of RAW. And no, even if Brock vs. Roman had occured as originally scheduled, it wouldn't have mattered because there's only so many times you can go "THIS TIME FOR SURE" before it loses its luster.

Nick Khan wants Day 1 to be an annual tradition, but didn't realized that WWE tried a similar concept in the past and it never worked. I don't see this being any different. And if you need a reminder... well, I guess you'll have to wait until next week, where I will revisit WWE's short-lived New Year's Revolution PPV series.

Later.