Thursday 4 January 2018 13:08, UK
It was the first Raw and SmackDown of the new year this week and WWE kicked it off in a big way with two huge Championship matches over their two main brands.
The Royal Rumble is now less than four weeks away and is taking shape with a number of other stars announcing that they will be participating in the annual event.
Whilst it was a good week for the likes of Roman Reigns and Becky Lynch, it seems that it was a bad week for AJ Styles and Alexa Bliss.
Samoa Joe has had The Shield in his sights for a number of weeks and after attacking Dean Ambrose and putting him on the shelf for the next few months, Roman Reigns was out to avenge his fallen friend.
Joe and Roman have had their own issues in recent months and after their match last week ended in controversy when Roman was disqualified for shoving the referee and then went on to brutalise Joe with a steel chair, Joe was also out for revenge.
This week the duo collided with the Intercontinental Championship on the line and the added stipulation that if Reigns was disqualified then he would lose the title.
Somehow Reigns managed to overcome the threat of the Samoan Submission Machine to not only retain his championship but also send a message to the locker room ahead of one of the biggest events of the year.
Becky Lynch was taken out by The Riott Squad a few months ago when they made their debut on SmackDown Live two nights after Survivor Series.
Since then she has been off screen filming her parts in The Marine 6 but with the women's Royal Rumble on the horizon, Becky made her return to SmackDown Live to take the fight to The Riott Squad alongside Charlotte and Naomi.
As expected, the trio got the upper hand on the newcomers after weeks of the Riott Squad taking advantage of the numbers game. Becky was the added element that Naomi and Charlotte have been lacking over the past few weeks and now the fight is a fair one in the SmackDown women's division.
In absence of an episode of NXT this week, WWE decided to broadcast a best of NXT in 2017 episode which finally featured Drew McIntyre's match against Adam Cole in San Antonio the night before NXT Takeover: War Games back in November.
WWE Hall of Famer Shawn Michaels served as the special guest referee in his hometown and the match turned out to be an interesting affair between two men who have never stood across the ring from one other.
McIntyre was the bigger man and proved his dominance throughout the match before picking up the win after Bobby Fish and Kyle O'Reilly attacked Michaels and he then hit Bobby Fish with Sweet Chin Music, the distraction allowed McIntyre to hit a spinning future shock DDT followed by Claymore to retain his championship in an impressive showing for the former NXT Champion.
Alexa Bliss hasn't defended her Raw Women's Championship for a number of months and the focus has been off her with Absolution making weekly statements on Monday Night Raw.
Following their altercation last week on Raw, general manager Kurt Angle made a match between Bliss and Asuka as part of the main roster for the first time on the first episode of 2018.
While Alexa managed to take the fight to the undefeated Empress of Tomorrow, it was inevitable that Asuka was going to pick up the win given her recent form.
The win now means that Asuka will have a shot at the Women's Championship in the coming months and not only will the title be on the line, but so will Asuka's undefeated streak and it seems unlikely that Asuka will lose her streak any time soon.
AJ Styles may be the WWE Champion but things are not exactly going his way right now. He was pinned by Kevin Owens last week on SmackDown before he was forced into a match with Sami Zayn this week and once again Shane McMahon's interference cost him the win.
Not only does this mean that the champion has been pinned twice in as many weeks, but following Zayn's win AJ stated that he would take on the odds and face Kevin and Sami in a handicap match.
It didn't exactly work out well for him though since general manager Daniel Bryan then announced that he would be facing the duo in a WWE Championship match at the Royal Rumble where once again the odds will be out of his favour.
TM61 were once one of the best up-and-coming teams in NXT before injury struck and the duo were forced onto the sidelines. Over the past year, the NXT tag team division has continued to blossom without them, but the Australian duo could finally be set to return to the ring in the coming weeks.
Shane Thorne and Nick Miller will have to work their way back through the ranks in a division that now includes the Street Profits, Heavy Machinery, the Undisputed Era and Sanity.
It is a completely different division to the one the duo left last year and it will be a long climb for the youngsters if they hope to be in contention for the Tag Team Championships for the first time in the near future.
