5 things that could happen on RAW next week

Another episode of Monday Night RAW is in the books. We’re only one week away from the 25th Anniversary special and less than 2 weeks away from the Royal Rumble PPV event.

Not a ton happened on this week’s episode as it pertains to strong build to the Rumble event, but there were a few decent stories told and some teases for what may come in the future.

Most of it built to stuff that will probably happen after the Royal Rumble event, which would be fine if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s an extremely important show and WWE is almost treating it like it doesn’t exist.

WWE will touch on more of this week’s episode as well as what I think is imminent for the 25th Anniversary of RAW next week, but first, let’s look at last week’s predictions.

- Jordan and Rollins lose to The Miztourage

Instead of Jordan bungling things up for his team, he made a couple of shrewd moves this week. He interrupted the match that The Bar was having and caused them to lose, got his dad to book Seth Rollins in a match with Finn Balor, who they lost to last week, and then cheated to help Rollins defeat Balor in said match. And Rollins… liked it? Seth was shocked and surprised by what he did, curbstomping Balor almost out of instinct, but he appeared to appreciate the help from Jordan. Interesting development.

The Miztourage ended up losing to Roman Reigns in a handicap match that was largely a waste of time. The Miz cut another great promo, and then just stood ringside and failed to successfully interfere, and then his team lost. It was an extremely poor way to build up to next week’s big title match and did nothing to make it more interesting. They should have just left it at Miz’ promo and been done with it.

- Bray Wyatt loses to Curt Hawkins thanks to Matt Hardy

Oddly enough, Bray Wyatt didn’t even appear on this week’s episode of RAW. Matt Hardy had another match and successfully defeated Heath Slater without much difficulty. I wonder if they are actually going to go anywhere with the Slater/Rhyno stuff or if it’s just an excuse for the commentary team to talk about something other than the match when those two guys are out there.

Hawkins did end up getting eaten by Braun Strowman, which is about as much different as you can get from getting a win over Bray Wyatt. I wonder why Bray wasn’t on the show this week.

- Continued boring lack of story progression for the Women’s Rumble

As expected, nothing is going on. Asuka and Nia Jax had a good match that had an ending that made Nia look weak, which I don’t think was the intended outcome. She’s supposed to be a physically dominant monster, but when her knee hurts, she clutches at it and nearly cries? Really? A count-out would have been far better, or at least something that didn’t involve her doing a terrible acting job by “crumbling” because she couldn’t put weight on her leg and almost coming to tears.

If you want me to think Asuka and Nia are THE forces to be reckoned with, then have them destroy each other and end the match without a winner. Don’t have one of the participants lose because her knee hurts. That makes her look incredibly weak and is the antithesis of building someone up as dominant. It didn’t even make Asuka look good, because she got lucky that Nia’s leg fell between the ring and the steps, and she just let the ref give her the win instead of trying to further injure Nia’s leg.

On the other side, we had yet another match that featured the three main babyface women and the Absolution team. This time it was a one-on-one with Sasha Banks losing to Sonya Deville clean in under 3 minutes. It was a fine match and the kick that ended the match looked good, and I like that Sonya got a definitive, clean victory over the former multi-time Women’s Champion. But I’m unbelievably tired of this formula. It’s the same thing every week. The good guys have each others’ backs so the bad guys don’t get an advantage.

Shouldn’t you want one of your opponents to be weakened before the Rumble match? Why defend her when you can easily just stand by and let her get hurt? Protecting Sasha just makes it more difficult for Bayley and Mickie to win the Rumble match. And at least Bayley and Sasha have a history of being friends. Why is Mickie out there? Is she their mom? The cool aunt, maybe? Ugh. The lack of any cohesive story is killing me and continues to sour me on the message that the women are actually part of a revolution/evolution.

- Jordan and Rollins are guests on Miz TV

Nothing involving these guys and Miz/Miztourage this week. Interesting. I wonder if due to Ambrose’ injury, they’re going to try to separate the Shield guys from each other until Dean is ready to come back. In any event, Jordan and Rollins did their own thing, and I liked it, actually, so I’m happy to be wrong on this one.

- Kane gets the upper hand

Interestingly enough, Kane wasn’t anywhere to be seen this week. I get that they want to sell that he and Brock were nearly killed by Braun last week, but these guys are all supposed to be superhuman. None of them should be selling things to each other for more than a very short period of time. Braun was a lot of fun on this week’s show, though, so I’m not by any means bothered by getting this one wrong. Kane shouldn’t be getting the one-up on anybody anyway, and everything he does at this point should go exactly the way it did when he chokeslammed Brock, who completely no-sold it and sat right up. Man, the match at the Royal Rumble has a chance to be extremely bad, and when Brock retains the title it’s going to be even worse because Philly is going to be begging to see Braun take that belt.

Overall, I went 1 for 5 this week. Not disappointing in any other fact that I’m disappointed that I was right that they continue to have no idea whatsoever about how to book the women’s division. It’s truly frustrating to a guy like me who really enjoys women’s wrestling and has been begging for YEARS for them to stop wasting them.

#5 A big brawl between all of the women in the Rumble

bayley mickie sasha — Bayley and Mickie James tend to Sasha Banks after her loss on RAW

I’m going to have some version of “nothing important” somewhere in every RAW and SmackDown column until WWE actually tells some kind of story with the women. Until then, I’m going to behave like them. Vague and uninteresting. On the 25th Anniversary / last RAW before the Royal Rumble, the main thing that will happen with the women will be an all-out brawl occurring at some point in the show. It may take place when a match gets out of hand, or, preferably, in a segment that involves some of the women from the past who are scheduled to appear.

Nikki and Brie Bella are the only women announced for the show who are likely to be in the match in 2 weeks, but it wouldn’t be shocking to see a surprise return from Trish Stratus. That would honestly be more effective, in my opinion, than having her as a surprise Rumble entrant. Yeah, it will get a big pop on the show, but it will get a bigger one if it happens on RAW, and it might help draw in a few extra fans to watch the show if they are guaranteed that one of the most anticipated entrants will indeed be in the match.

#4 The Revival get beat up by some legends

This week’s segment with The Revival announcing that they are “wrestlers” is not likely to have a pretty outcome. If history serves my memory correctly, mid-card acts who talk a lot of trash but aren’t generally doing anything important often get some comeuppance in the form of getting beaten up by legends if there’s going to be an appearance coming up. A bunch of past stars are going to be in New York next Monday, and it would not be surprising to me to see The Revival beat another nameless team only to gloat again and be met with the reality that they are just a couple of softballs around to get lobbed up whenever someone more important rolls around.

It would be great to see WWE actually use the legends for something that actually benefits current talent, though. I would love to see The Revival face a challenge from a returning team/group of legends and end up beating them down and coming out on top. A new set of challengers needs to be established for the RAW Tag Titles, and The Revival is the right team for that spot.

#3 Stephanie McMahon & Triple H confront Braun Strowman

braun strowman kurt angle — Kurt Angle tries and fails, to talk Strowman out of killing everything in sight

I’ve seen a couple of rumors kicking around that Braun Strowman and Triple H may do battle this year at WrestleMania. Triple H hasn’t appeared on TV since he was destroyed by Strowman at Survivor Series (as far as I recall) and at the time, people took this as a sign that as WrestleMania started approaching, Triple H would return to try to get revenge. Braun is clearly not going to win the WWE Title at the Royal Rumble and there’s no way that he gets relegated to the Andre Battle Royal, so a match with Triple H probably makes the most sense for him this year.

It has already been announced that DX, including Triple H and Shawn Michaels, will be appearing at RAW 25. This week, Kurt Angle revealed that Stephanie McMahon called him up to rehire Strowman after Kurt fired him earlier in the night. I would not be surprised to see Stephanie appear to try to chastise Braun for what he did, only to have him corner the Commissioner, which leads to Triple H coming out to protect his wife and exact some revenge for Survivor Series. It won’t go well for Triple H, as he will end up “getting these hands” from Strowman, making him look strong going into his title match.

#2 Tease of a Finn Balor heel turn

rollins curp stomp — Seth Rollins busted out the curb stomp for the first time in a couple years

I found it to be slightly awkward, and certainly weird, that the final 2 and a half minutes of RAW saw Finn Balor and the Good Brothers stand in silence as Finn tried to get his wits about him. I thought to myself during those odd, quiet moments, that it must be leading somewhere. As I thought, the idea came to me that they didn’t have Rollins pull out the curb stomp finisher for no reason.

While it could possibly lead to a Rollins heel turn as he embraces his team with Jordan, it’s more likely that Rollins will say that he got caught up in the moment, but he is glad that everything happened the way it did because it woke him up, and he and Jordan end up being a more cohesive unit.

The more important part is what having his face stomped into the mat does to Balor. They stressed that 1) the ref messed up and he actually won the match and 2) the curb stomp was unexpected and significant. I think they might go with some sort of story that Finn got his brains a bit rattled by the move, and that his psyche got messed up, causing him to go bad.

It would be something like Randy Orton having IED, which caused him to go out of control and do impulsive things like RKO Stephanie McMahon or give Vince McMahon the infamous punt to the head. I would prefer that they avoid something like that, but the eerie silence and the look in Finn’s eyes made me feel that they are going in that direction.

I would much prefer to see Finn get motivated by what happened. He’s upset that Rollins used a move that was banned, and he’s upset that he clearly won the match, but officials screwed it up and let Rollins get the victory. Balor as a heel with a chip on his shoulder (like he was when he started the Bullet Club almost 5 years ago) is much better than Balor as a heel because he got his head stomped into the mat and his brain doesn’t work correctly. We shall see what happens.

#1 The Miz wins the Intercontinental Championship

There’s no doubt in my mind that one of the biggest moments from the 25th Anniversary episode of RAW will see The Miz regain the Intercontinental Championship. If it’s anything like the match that saw Roman win the title, it will be a really, really good match that is mostly even with minimal interference from the Miztourage. At the very end, though, they will probably play a part in the title changing hands.

This will probably not be the main event of the show, because I think that after losing the title, later on in the night they will have Roman announce that after what happened tonight on RAW, he is going to focus on another opportunity… winning the Royal Rumble again and winning the Universal Title that he believes is rightfully his. It could end up being the main event, though, if Miz ends up winning the belt in a chaotic scene that leads to the show ending with a gigantic brawl, as episodes of RAW before the Rumble tend to do.

No matter how it happens, one thing that I am very confident in saying is that The Miz will become 8-time Intercontinental Champion, putting him one reign behind Chris Jericho. He will also likely become the longest reigning IC Champion by way of combined days, as he is only 3 weeks behind 2-time champion Don Muraco and under 100 days behind 2-time champion Pedro Morales.