WWE Raw Results: Highlights, Analysis, and Grades for December 18

Photo Source: WWE.com via Twitter

Okay, So Who Faces Brock Lesnar?

Raw starts off with Kurt Angle coming down to the ring. The embattled GM promises that by the evening’s end, he’ll figure out who Brock Lesnar’s opponent at Royal Rumble will be. Because, you know, it’s not like he’s had a whole week to sit down and think this one through. If my students procrastinated half as much as pro wrestling authority figures, none of them would ever get any work done.

Mercifully, Braun Strowman comes to the ring to plead his case. Braun reminds Angle that he ended the night upright, unlike Kane, so the Universal Title shot should belong to him. That brings out The Big Red Machine to counter with his career accomplishments. Last I checked, pro wrestling is a “what have you done for me lately” type of business, so I don’t know why Kane reading off his resume is relevant.

And, of course, because Brock Lesnar was advertised for this week’s show, out comes Paul Heyman to bring him out right off the bat. The best part of the entire segment is watching three monsters stand nearly perfectly still while Kurt Angle is slackjawed and bent-kneed like he’s about to run away. Angle very quickly makes the world’s most obvious announcement of a triple threat match and gets out of Dodge.

Once Angle is out of the way, the three match participants start a brief brawl. It ends with Lesnar hitting Kane with an F5 while Braun was outside the ring, but Kane sat up as Lesnar celebrated on the ramp. Not a bad way to try and hype a crowd for an obvious match with a terribly obvious result (Lesnar pinning Kane), though it remains to be seen how well the match shakes out.