5 things that could happen on RAW next week
This week’s very special Christmas episode of Monday Night RAW was a decently entertaining show. There wasn’t anything actively bad, which is usually the case these days - there was some good stuff, some okay stuff, and some stuff that you just don’t understand. Finn Balor is still just beating up nerds for no reason and Kane is dominating a pair of guys who WWE needs to rebuild in order to keep the shamble of their tag team division alive.
Last week, I postulated a number of things that I expected would happen on Christmas RAW Christmas. Let’s look at them.
- John Cena announces entry in the Royal Rumble match
Color me surprised. I fully expected him to throw his hat into the ring, but maybe he won’t be showing up this year. He could still be a surprise entrant, but we’ll see how that turns out. His segment with Elias was a lot of fun and the match was good, but I wish it didn’t take him 10 seconds to win a match after he spent 20 minutes getting destroyed. I’ll always be bothered by Cena doing that.
- Enzo Amore retains the Cruiserweight Championship
This one didn’t happen because they decided against having the title match on this week’s show. After Dean Ambrose got put on the shelf and WWE decided to throw the tag belts on Jason Jordan and Seth Rollins, they may not have wanted to have another title change hands on the same show. The match will now happen next week, and I wonder if Cedric Alexander will be the new champion.
- The Revival defeat Slater & Rhyno in a rematch
Well, they did have Rhyno give Slater some tough love in having him put into a match with Kane. I guess that counts as storyline progression for them? The Revival, only one week after making their surprise return, were nowhere to be seen. What gives?
- Finn Balor and Hideo Itami have no interaction at all
As expected, Itami went on to strictly cruiserweight action. Finn, also as expected, continued spinning his wheels as he defeated Curt Hawkins this week. At least they didn’t make Hawkins look like a threat the way they did with Dallas and Axel. That was ridiculous.
- The Shield, The Bar, Joe, and Jordan stay in their own little bubble
Indeed, as The Bar lost the tag titles to Jordan and Rollins and Samoa Joe defeated Roman Reigns by DQ in a match for the IC Title before getting absolutely wrecked by the champion after the match. Both matches were good and the story is finally moving forward a little bit, so I can’t complain too much.
Overall, I went a clean 2 for 5. Finn and Itami did exactly as I expected (although there was no Santa hat for Finn) and the superfriends all kept together in their clique.
#5 Drew Gulak costs Enzo Amore the Cruiserweight Championship
The CW Title match that was supposed to happen on Christmas will instead now take place on New Year’s Day. I postulated that maybe this match was bumped back a week because WWE didn’t want two different title switches on the same show, and once they decided to give Rollins and Jordan the Tag Titles, they decided to wait a week to pull the trigger on Alexander.
Whether or not Alexander gets the victory and the title on the next episode of RAW, I still hold strong to my expectation that he will be the next Cruiserweight Champion. I do believe that it will happen on the first day of the year, the first RAW of the year, and I think Drew Gulak will “accidentally” play a small role in it.