5 things that could happen on RAW next week

Man, I have to say, RAW was a chore and a half to get through this week. It was boring and the wrestling was leagues below what it has been in recent weeks. Jordan and Rollins had a pretty good match and the six-man tag was okay. Gulak vs. Alexander was a good match but Enzo on commentary made it nearly unwatchable. Otherwise, this show was a significant drop off in overall quality from recent weeks on all fronts. There were some good moments and we’ll get into that later. First, here’s what I wrote about last week.

- Bray Wyatt and Matt Hardy just talk back and forth again

I was close with this one, but not quite on the mark. Instead of intercutting promos, they had two separate backstage ones. They were actually somewhat coherent, too, which works well. Bray, especially, was more coherent than he has been in quite a long time. He kept it short and made a point. That was great to see. I’ll give myself half a point for this because they still kept this as backstage promos instead of doing something different. Matt playing chess with Napoleon was great. I hope they do something extremely out of the ordinary for the Christmas edition of RAW next week.

- Finn Balor continues to be completely directionless

I’m giving myself three-quarters of a point for this one. Balor participated in a handicap match against the Miztourage, which is exactly what I predicted they would do. He ended up getting his ass handed to him (which is insane and beyond stupid) and needed help to beat them. It was great to see Hideo Itami, who is debuting on 205 Live, help him out. That was a good callback to when Finn debuted in NXT as Hideo’s partner. I don’t know if this signifies the beginning of the cruiserweights being more integrated with the main roster, but that would be nice. It’s probably just to hype Hideo’s debut on 205 Live. Worst case scenario, they’re teasing making Finn a cruiserweight. EIther way, I have a feeling that Finn and Hideo won’t be a regular tag team going forward, so I’m assuming he still has no direction. But I’ll wait and see, which is why I won’t give myself the full point.

- Drew Gulak becomes number 1 contender

Well, I was wrong on this one. Going into the match this week I fully expected this to happen, and a few times Drew came very close to picking up the victory. His promo before the match in the ring, as well as backstage afterwards, were great, and I really hope they do more with him than just comedy.

- Reigns defends the IC Title against Sheamus

Roman Reigns didn’t even appear on RAW this week in any manner, so obviously this didn’t happen. Maybe it’ll happen next week.

- Jason Jordan beats Samoa Joe with help from Roman Reigns

Jordan did indeed come out and demand a match with Samoa Joe for the third week in a row, but he still did not get it. He did have a good match with Seth Rollins instead and got a little bit of Joe in the six-man tag match later on in the night, at least. Reigns, of course, was not on the show. It’s probably going to be a while before JJ gets a chance at Joe in a one-on-one match now, though, because his match with Seth was for a shot at Joe, and he lost. They do realize that Joe isn’t a champion or a number 1 contender for anything… why exactly was this match for a shot at wrestling him? I can understand if it was a chance to wrestle him that night but on a future show? That’s pretty silly.

Overall - This week I only ended up at 1.25 out of 5. I was looking pretty strong at the beginning, but my last three predictions were completely off the mark. So now that this week is over and done with, what can we expect on the Christmas night edition of Monday Night RAW?

#5 John Cena announces entry in the Royal Rumble match

John Cena will be returning to WWE on RAW next week

The first official entrant in this year’s Rumble match is Elias, as he announced it this week on RAW. I expect that during his appearance on the Christmas episode next week, one of John Cena’s main directives will be to announce that he will be in the Royal Rumble match because he wants one more shot to try to get World Title number 17.

He’ll probably get interrupted by a couple of geeks like Gallows and Anderson who will try to ruin his Christmas spirit, and he’ll beat them up before leaving the ring and not showing up for the rest of the night. This will be the show’s opening segment.

#4 Enzo Amore retains the Cruiserweight Championship

Enzo Amore and Drew Gulak enter the arena before the #1 Contender's match

It was announced on WWE.com that Cedric Alexander won’t have to do any waiting around for his shot at the Cruiserweight Championship. He gets his opportunity to take the purple and silver away from Enzo next week on Christmas. I did predict that he will be the next CW Champion, but I don’t think they are going to do it next week.

I have seen some people complain about how WWE has been doing so much of the important cruiserweight stuff on RAW instead of 205 Live, but I think it’s for the best. It gets more eyes on these men, and it makes them look more important. Originally their appearances on RAW were usually just quick advertisements to try to get people to watch 205 Live the following night. Nothing important really happened, and most of the big matches and storyline development occurred on Tuesday after SmackDown.

Far fewer people watch that show than RAW, so when they tried to follow-up with their 205 Live stories on Monday nights, people had no idea what was going on. Now they are doing stories on both shows, but the stuff that happens on Tuesday nights isn’t extremely important to the point where it’s necessary viewing to know what is going on when they show up on RAW.

I believe that the storyline stuff should mostly stay on RAW and that 205 Live should be completely different. Make it 95% wrestling and cut out the talking and story stuff for the most part. I bet more people would watch it, because it would remind them of the very successful Cruiserweight Classic.

#3 The Revival defeat Slater & Rhyno in a rematch

The Revival hit the Shatter Machine on Heath Slater

Dash and Dawson made their surprise return this week on RAW in a successful outing against Heath Slater and Rhyno. After the match, Kurt Angle essentially told them that if they didn’t start winning matches, they were going to get fired. This led to Rhyno telling Slater that he’s going to help him toughen up. I get the feeling this is just going to lead to Rocky-style comedy montages, which will be fine because they will probably be funny, but there’s something interesting to be made from this if they really want to make Slater and Rhyno a legitimate tag team.

In any event, they will challenge Dash and Dawson to a rematch and be unsuccessful in their attempt to beat the returning stars. It will be the start of Rhyno showing Heath some tough love. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a Gore (Gore! Gore!) after the match, only to have Rhyno carry Heath out of the arena over his shoulder to continue training to be tougher.

#2 Finn Balor and Hideo Itami have no interaction at all

Finn Balor and Hideo Itami were victorious on Monday Night RAW

As I talked about at the beginning, I have a feeling that the pairing of Balor and Itami was a one-time event just to hype up the 205 Live debut of Itami this week. Chances are low that these two men will become a regular tag team, although it would be nice to see, since the tag division could use a legit team and there’s no chance that Finn Balor will be anywhere near the Universal Title picture until mid-April at the very earliest (and even then it’s very questionable).

My guess is that after a successful match on 205 Live, Itami will defeat one of Enzo’s goons on the Christmas episode of RAW, while Finn will probably end up wearing a Santa hat and doing nothing important.

#1 The Shield, The Bar, Joe, and Jordan stay in their own little bubble

This rivalry may never have an ending

Although they have been putting together some very good matches over the last few months, the constant matches between these 7 men have become tiring to watch. It’s just a bunch of matches between different variations of the same 7 guys, there’s very little storyline development, and it’s getting a little bit boring.

Dean Ambrose’s elbow injury is interesting, and I wonder if it’s going to be the beginning of his heel turn that will happen at some point in early 2018. I hope it means that Ambrose and Rollins, after losing multiple times, are also done getting shots at the tag titles, which means that The Bar will be able to move on soon.

At this point, the only people out of this group that should be involved with each other are Jordan, Joe and Reigns. Joe and Roman are essentially feuding over the Intercontinental Championship, and Jordan desperately wants to get his hands on Samoa Joe.

Next week we will probably get the Joe/Rollins match that was advertised for this week’s episode. Jordan might have to reluctantly team with Roman Reigns against Sheamus and Cesaro since Ambrose is out of action and they will just HAVE to continue making these guys wrestle each other.

At this point, the only matches I care to see are Joe vs. Roman for the IC Title and Sheamus vs. Roman for the IC Title. I assume that the latter will happen before the former. Hopefully, Joe taking the belt from Roman, probably sometime shortly before the Royal Rumble (or maybe on the PPV itself) will be the end of this endless rivalry.