5 things that could happen on RAW next week: Monday Night Rollins

WWE RAW was a tale of two different shows this week. The opening match, a nearly two-hour long gauntlet featuring the 7 men who will compete inside the Elimination Chamber on Sunday night, was absolutely amazing.

Seth Rollins put in an unbelievable 65-minute performance and all 7 men were great. After that match, however, the show just fell apart. Whoever decided that they should give Asuka, who is still learning to speak English, a live microphone and a lot of scripted sentences to say needs to be taken out of whatever position of power they are in.

My god, that was horrible. Titus and Apollo had another match against Sheamus & Cesaro, winning another non-title match that gave them a title shot on Sunday. They already got their title shot and lost! Where were The Revival and The Club?

Also, Titus was extra bad. He was falling all over himself and looked like he was never even trained to wrestle. Finally, the women’s tag match was standard fare and average at best, with Mandy Rose specifically looking lost out there. Let’s talk some more about what I predicted last week.

- Tag Team Turmoil Announced!

I’m embarrassed at how bad WWE is handling the tag team division on RAW. Instead of involving any of the other teams available, they’re just going back to Titus and Apollo, who already lost a title match against The Bar.

Did they forget that Gallows & Anderson and The Revival exist? I have a feeling they’re going to just face each other again, on the pre-show. So no, there will be no tag team turmoil. There will be a bad tag team match featuring three great wrestlers and Titus O’Neil, who will drag everyone down, and nobody will care.

- 7-man Chamber called historic, not a compromise

Yeah, saw this coming. They barely even acknowledged what happened at the end of the show last week. A clip aired of Angle telling Rollins and Finn that they were both in the match, both men smiled, and that was it.

Okay. Wow. Really going for the least effort possible. The gauntlet match, as I said above, was great with Rollins’ performance specifically being incredible, but that was the only story they told.

Cena made an excuse for losing, Reigns cut a terrible promo before the match, and commentary harped about how amazing it was that for the first time ever there would be 7 men instead of 6 inside the Chamber.

Ick. If I didn’t like so many of the wrestlers and their good matches, I would stop watching WWE because their stories, and generally the lack thereof, are just so frustrating.

- Back to stage one for Apollo Crews

Not quite, but I’m still pessimistic about it. Instead of being left off the card or in a multi-man match, he’s going to be in the tag title match.

He and Titus are only there to lose, and Apollo will still find himself in the Andre the Giant Battle Royal unless they do a multi-team tag match at WrestleMania.

Maybe he’ll go to SmackDown after WrestleMania. I was right about Hardy vs. Wyatt, though. It was obvious, but darn it I was still right! Combined, I get half a point for this.

- Random matches for the men

I was extremely wrong about this one. While it wasn’t a feat of creative genius, this match may have completely rebuilt Seth Rollins after a long time floundering. It was fun all the way through and much better than a bunch of singles matches. It was different and awesome.

- The women get some time to shine

With the amount of time the men took, there wasn’t much time for anything else on the show, but they did get in a segment with Nia and Asuka going head-to-head (it was bad, but it happened) and the six-woman tag match did close the show in the main event slot, pushing the women’s Elimination Chamber match as the last thing you see on RAW before the show.

Not quite as strong of a push as I was expecting, but anything was going to pale in comparison to what the men got.

Overall, I went 2 out of 5. One for the “historic” 7-man Elimination Chamber match and a half a point for Apollo and the women. Moving forward, here's what I expect next week after on RAW, featuring the fallout from the Elimination Chamber pay-per-view?

#5 Tag team competition heats up

the bar — Who will The Bar take on at WrestleMania?

With the intermediary PPV between Royal Rumble and WrestleMania over for RAW, the build to New Orleans will begin. It will be slow because that’s how things tend to go, but things will start taking shape.

I think Apollo and Titus will be involved for a time but won’t be a team at WrestleMania. The Club and The Revival will continue fighting for their shot at The Bar. I wonder if Heath Slater and Rhyno will get involved at all.

Okay, maybe “heats up” isn’t the right phrase. They will begin to show us the direction for the Tag Titles at WrestleMania. It’ll probably be a triple threat, which I’m fine with. It would be nice to see all four current teams on RAW vying for the shot, though.

I’d even get The Miztourage involved just to add some more depth. Have a round robin series of matches or something. All of the teams wrestle each other once, and the team that wins the most gets a shot at WrestleMania. It doesn’t have to be complex. Just healthy competition.

#4 Jeff Hardy Returns

I don’t know the status of Jeff’s injury, but I think they are going to start the next great war on Monday, and it begins with the return of Jeff Hardy. It’ll be interesting to see what Bray Wyatt does to combat Matt and Jeff… maybe bring in SAnitY up from NXT?

I expect that WrestleMania is going to see some sort of giant spectacle featuring Wyatt vs. Hardy, and you have to expect that Jeff, Reby Sky and Senor Benjamin are going to be involved.

I’d personally have Bray win the match at Elimination Chamber specifically to give Matt a reason to begin to build his army, but either way works. I’m very interested to see if WWE can pull this feud out of the gutter.

I’ve been very hopeful ever since Matt Hardy claimed that he was being given some creative freedom with the character, and when Impact gave up full rights to the Broken Universe, it gave me even more hope. Matt said there are some great things in store, and I have to guess that things are going to start picking up as we get closer to WrestleMania.

#3 Asuka chooses her WrestleMania title match

WWE is known for treading water, but I don’t think they’ll wait all the way until March 12 (the night after Fastlane) to have Asuka choose which Women’s Championship she will be wrestling for on April 8.

WWE made it clear on RAW this week that Nia Jax would be involved in the Women’s Title match if she beats Asuka at Elimination Chamber, whether Asuka opts for the RAW or SD Live title. That answers the question I had about whether or not they were going to address Ronda Rousey’s interruption at the end of the Royal Rumble PPV.

Asuka never got to announce her choice the way Nakamura got to earlier on in the night, and now she will get that chance. I doubt Nia Jax will end up winning, but I do think that it is quite possible that Asuka will choose the SmackDown Live title.

If she does indeed go that direction, it should happen sooner rather than later in order to allow them enough time to properly build up the RAW Women’s Title match.

#2 Braun Strowman goes on a rampage

This may be a little bit vague because rampaging is pretty much the one setting that Strowman has, but I think it will be amped up even more after he fails to win the Elimination Chamber match on Sunday.

He will end up being pinned after multiple finishers are hit on him, and he will be out to make sure multiple somebodies get his hands. Braun will tear up the backstage area, get in Kurt Angle’s face -- it will be like the night he ate the cake, only ten times worse. I would love to see someone step up to try to stop him.

Honestly, I wouldn’t be against Finn Balor being that guy. I know that the rumour is that Strowman is going to be challenging The Miz for the Intercontinental Championship at WrestleMania, but that doesn’t feel like a WrestleMania match.

Strowman vs. Demon Balor does feel like a WrestleMania match. The issue is that I would want Braun to go home with the victory, but it would mean sacrificing the Demon character, as it would only be the third time it has appeared on TV since Finn has been on the main roster. I have no idea where Finn fits in at WrestleMania. I hope it’s not the AtG Battle Royal.

#1 Roman Reigns calls out Lesnar, gets Heyman instead

Brock Lesnar won’t be making any unadvertised appearances before WrestleMania. I have a feeling that after Roman inevitably wins the match and punches his ticket to WrestleMania, the first thing he’s going to do is open up Monday Night RAW by calling out Brock Lesnar.

Now, it’s kind of dumb to do that when you never know if Brock’s actually going to show up, and when the norm is that he isn’t there, but that’s okay.

Paul Heyman, as he often does, will show up in Brock’s absence and congratulate Roman Reigns on his victory but he will also make it clear that Roman, just like at WrestleMania 31, is not ready to step into the ring with Brock Lesnar.

Heyman will also probably announce that Brock will show up next week to address the situation himself, but for now, Roman should just sit tight and enjoy the victory while he can.

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