The biggest winners and losers of last night's Raw (January 7)

Now that the holidays are over, everyone knew that last night's Raw would be the first true test of whether the proclaimed "new era" would be anything meaningful or just hype. Going in, it looked like it was just hype, with the strategy being the usual return of some big names to get a temporary rating boost. Indeed, the first half hour or so was far from encouraging, as despite a hot opening brawl between Seth Rollins and Bobby Lashley, we got an unnecessarily long promo segment with John Cena announcing his Royal Rumble entrance. This was followed up by the controversial return of Hulk Hogan, which, even though it was a nice tribute to "Mean Gene" Okerlund, didn't tell us much about how good the red brand would do going forward.

Was this grim outlook true? Who were the biggest winners and losers last night? The course of events could prove decisive in whether the red brand could be considered on course to rebound from a terrible 2018 and give us an exciting year to come.

Winners: The Revival

This was a fun match. It was certainly the type of outing that could help to revive (no pun intended) the fortunes of the Raw tag team division, which suffered an abysmal 2018. Even so, The Revival once again wound up falling short in their pursuit of the Raw Tag Team Championships.

However, there was a catch. Dawson's foot was under the bottom rope during the pinfall. This suggests that there will be a finale to this story, possibly to come during the Royal Rumble. Appropriate or not, WWE usually wants at least one title change on a pay per view, and if a championship match happens there, the Raw Tag Team Championships would be the likeliest titles to change hands.

We'll have to see.

So far, so good.