Happy New Year to my readers! Hopefully 2005 will bring us more stuff to be happy watching.

The first RAW of the year mostly did just that. First, I counted 6 matches, but many of them given a little more time to develop. Again more ring action, always a good thing.

Right out of the gate a hot crowd popped big for Batista. The WWE are doing things right with him... they're letting him slowly build up a fan base, instead of just pushing him to the moon as they did with Randy Orton. As an IJ-O, I was upset that he squashed Chris Benoit, but I have to say I marked out at him powering out of the Crossface!

Edge-Y2J was a good match - but I think that's more due to Jericho. Edge may have more of a personality now, but he still isn't that on fire in the ring.

I'm glad they finally had Mohammed Hassan state he didn't speak for all Arab Americans. He's still another "Evil automatically because of ethnicity" character, but at least he's not typecasting all of his nationality. Not that he won't draw heat from the ignorant redneck demographic...

Trish was really built up as a badass this week, but as a sign of the small size of the division, no mention was even made of the long feud she and Victoria had in the past.

After this week, I'm not even sure if we'll get the destruction of Gene Snitsky. That Kane came out on top makes that more dubious to me.

With both Christian and Tyson Tomko winning their singles matches against the tag champs, it is most likely they won't win their tag match at the PPV... but it would make a good surprise if they do. The tag titles make for better storytelling when babyfaces are chasing the gold instead of holding it.

2 matches were sub-par to me: Shelton Benjamin-Sylvain Grenier just didn't click, and Randy Orton-HHH was just dull. Only the extra-curriculars/run-ins made the ending interesting. Orton got a clean win, hopefully putting an end to the feud.

Overall in spite of a few so-so things, this was another solid show.