5 things that could happen on RAW next week: Shake Up Fallout

The first night of WWE’s second annual “Superstar Shakeup” featured a few interesting moves, but nothing interesting story-wise, and nothing to write home about as far as in-ring performances. That’s my issue with a lot of these recent “holding pattern” episodes of RAW and SmackDown. They are the equivalent of a stretched-out transactional board meeting that, at the end of it, has given people new assignments and wasted everyone’s time. It was a total filler show -- instead of starting up some new rivalries or furthering some current ones, they brought a bunch of people over from SmackDown, generally in very uninteresting ways, and had some average matches in between. It wasn’t actively bad -- it wasn’t actively anything. There was no action. I feel like this should have been some sort of Network special or something they promoted as a big Facebook Watch event. Doing it on TV just lends itself to a week of wasted time.

Anyway, I made some predictions for what I expected for this week’s RAW. Let’s see what I said and how I did.

- Complete silence from Brock Lesnar

This went off exactly as I wrote last week. Brock and Heyman wouldn’t have a presence at all but would be announced for next week. Check. Roman would say a little bit about Brock, but his time on the show would be mostly about building the Joe/Roman match at Backlash. Check. The crowd still hates Roman’s guts. Check. Moving on.

- Big overhaul of the women’s division

I didn’t completely nail all of the moves, but I got a couple right and I was definitely right about the overhaul. RAW got Natalya (who I predicted) and The Riott Squad (I predicted just Ruby, but it is what it is). I also expected Becky Lynch to show up, but that did not occur. Hopefully, she gets something to do on SmackDown soon.

- Matt Hardy & Bray Wyatt win a shot at the tag team titles

I think this one was fully obvious. I expect that The Revival will end up on SmackDown, and with Jeff Hardy winning the US Title this week, I think being moved to SmackDown is inevitable as well, which I predicted last week. It makes more sense than sending Rollins and the IC Title over there. Miz will just have to wait a while before he becomes the longest reigning champion. In any event, Hardy and Wyatt will probably win the belts next Friday, and I hope they stick around as a team and this isn’t all a big ruse that sees Wyatt turn on Matt. Also, their tandem entrance is terrible and needs to not be a thing.

- Big E, Rusev, and Ziggler come to RAW

I only hit on one of these, so it looks like The New Day will continue on as a unit for at least a little while longer. After he gets literally buried at the GRR next Friday, I’m hoping Rusev can get something going on SmackDown, but I won’t hold my breath. Ziggler did indeed make the jump, and he was given the redebuting Drew McIntyre as a running buddy. I’m interested in seeing where it goes.

At this point, Drew is the real star. I hope to see them run with Drew helping Ziggler gain some singles success while also making some progress on his own, only for Ziggler to outlive his welcome, at which time Drew beats the crap out of him, they have a match that Drew wins, and both men move on. Yeah, it’s pretty much Shawn and Diesel, as everyone on social media has already pointed out. As long as it doesn’t last too long it can be good.

- No Ronda Rousey

This is interesting. Ronda showed up backstage with Kurt Angle and it was revealed that she and the newest RAW female superstar Natalya were training partners. Ronda then power-walked down to the ring to save Nattie from being destroyed by Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville. I guess this means they’re just going to give her a trial by fire and even though I don’t like Rousey I hope this doesn’t backfire on them.

Putting her with Natalya is good because it gets her in the ring around a veteran who knows how to protect and teach someone less experienced, but if the first plan is to put Nattie and Ronda in a ring against Mandy and Sonya at Backlash, that’s going to be a rough one. I would expect Nattie to do most of the work with a hot tag or two so Ronda can get a couple of big moves in. They need Rousey to be working with vets, not other newcomers, so hopefully, after Backlash they do that.

People are expecting to see a teacher/student rivalry, and that works for me. Let’s just hope that they do it all right and don’t expose Rousey as a bad wrestler, because if they don’t play it smart and she has a bunch of really bad matches, her star power won’t help her overcome her lack of charisma and in-ring ability, and it’s going to take a lot if they want her to headline WrestleMania next year.

Overall, I went 3 and a third out of 5. I think that’s my best yet. I’m giving myself one-third of a point for Ziggler coming to RAW even though Big E and Rusev did not. On to next week, which is the last RAW before the Greatest Royal Rumble and the first week with the new roster.

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#5 Ziggler goes after Seth Rollins

Drew McIntyre and Dolph Ziggler hit a tandem Claymore/Zig-Zag

This may be something of a bold prediction because people are expecting that Seth and the IC Title are heading to SmackDown while Jeff Hardy will keep the US Title on RAW. If that does happen then I’ll give myself half a point when Ziggler goes after Hardy instead. I think WWE is going to try one more time to give Ziggler a proper run, and while it isn’t likely to end with a main event stay, he can at least become a top-level featured player again before he pushes McIntyre too far and Drew turns on him.

I’m expecting that they will continue the build for Backlash and begin the build for beyond the event starting next week. It’s tough to say what the Backlash card is going to look like. WWE has already pulled the Orton vs. Mahal match from the card, and haven’t replaced it with Orton vs. The United States Champion, which is odd. Maybe it’s just an oversight. I’m sure we’ll find out more on SmackDown.

The Greatest Royal Rumble event muddies things up a bit for the build to Backlash and having that show so close to the shake-up also makes it a bit more difficult to get everything in place. With it being the first show in the return of dual-branded PPV events, though, it would make sense to do a couple RAW vs. SmackDown matches if necessary in order to complete feuds and get title belts where they want them to be.

#4 The Bar destroy Breezango in a rematch

Sheamus works over Tyler Breeze in the corner

This week on RAW, the newly acquired Tyler Breeze and Fandango took on, and defeated, former RAW Tag Team Champions The Bar in their debut match on the red brand. It was with a quick roll-up out of nowhere, which, in a case that sees a low-card team defeat a high-level team means it was a fluke.

I would like to think it was the beginning of a run with some new life for the Fashion Police, but I’m not going to take that bait because I don’t like setting myself up for disappointment. They will have a rematch next week and Sheamus & Cesaro will destroy Breezango before their Tag Title match at the GRR next Friday.

Again, I would love to see Breezango get that run that it looked like they were going to get last year when they were feuding with The Usos, but that was not in the cards and I don’t expect much out of a run for them on RAW, either. With a whole extra hour on their new home, I hope they at least get to do the Fashion Files on a regular basis.

#3 Dallas & Axel lose to the AOP and break up

The Miztourage refuse to make a tag to The Miz on his last night on RAW

In another episode of “I hope, but I’m not holding my breath”, I think next week could be the end of Dallas and Axel as a tag team. I somewhat expect that one of them will be moved over to SmackDown with that guy getting a chance at a singles run, but we’ll see what happens there.

I expect that now that Miz is gone they will also disband, but not before being sacrificed to the Authors of Pain. My personal hope would be for them to reinvent themselves, start wearing matching ring gear and become a true tag team, but it’s another thing I’m not willing to hold my breath for.

The Authors of Pain are a good team but I don’t know where they fit in yet. Putting them in a feud for the Tag Titles right away would be a bad idea if they plan to keep Hardy and Wyatt as a team because it means that either the Deleters of Worlds or Authors of Pain have to take a loss that neither team should be taking. If they are breaking up, then they could strap a rocket on the AOP and give them the belts pretty quickly.

I don’t expect that to happen so soon, so I think they’re going to go the route of the Bludgeon Brothers and have them spend a while (possibly too long) destroying lower level teams and “local talents”.

#2 Bobby Lashley defeats Elias

I would like to see big things for Elias in 2018 but it may be a long shot

Neither man is going to have a role in a singles capacity at the Greatest Royal Rumble, but they will tie up the loose end on RAW next week. Lashley made his WWE return by taking out Elias, and this week on RAW,

Elias badmouthed him in a backstage segment. Lashley will take Elias apart next week, in another instance of WWE ignoring the fans and beating down someone who should be getting a more prominent role.

I don’t know how the new dual-branded PPVs are going to affect Elias, but if you look into it, the guy could barely even buy his way onto the kickoff show in 2017. He had a single main show match on PPV in 2017, which was a loss to Jason Jordan at TLC. His only other non pre-show appearance was in a losing effort in the 6-man Elimination Chamber match this year.

For the rest of 2017, he was in a couple of pre-show matches. What I’m trying to say here is that I guess nothing is likely to change for Elias in the near future. Fewer spots on the PPV cards means that a guy who already wasn’t being used on PPV has even less of a chance to be used now.

#1 No physical interaction between Roman and Brock, Joe chokes Roman out

Brock Lesnar and Paul Heyman will return to RAW next week

Something gives me the feeling that Paul Heyman is going to do a lot of talking (shocker) and Roman is going to interrupt (shocker, part 2) but there will be no physical confrontation between the men fighting for the Universal Title next Friday. I think they will have Joe blindside Roman and have him choke him out on the ramp similar to what they did with Joe and Brock last summer.

It builds to Joe vs. Roman at Backlash, it makes Roman look like a bigger underdog (it’s not my preference, but this is how WWE seems to want it) for the cage match, and it fits in with the path WWE has been taking with both men.

I would love to see Roman beat Brock by escaping the cage, which gives Joe even more ammo to use, saying that he had to take the easy way out to finally defeat Lesnar, followed by Joe taking the Universal Title away from Roman at Backlash, only a week and 2 days after Roman wins it. Yes, they keep giving him the belt and taking it away and people would complain about it because they are having someone take the belt from Brock and end the year plus reign only to immediately give it to someone else, but there’s a motivation to do it.

Roman needs just one more little piece of the puzzle to be put in place before he turns heel, and losing the Universal Title almost immediately after winning it, since he has been chasing it for so long, is that piece.

I still don’t expect to have Roman turn heel, because WWE seems willing to die on the hill of Roman becoming a beloved superman/underdog good guy, but if it happens, this would be the perfect way to do it. That way they can give Roman a proper title reign as a bad guy, where it would likely be most effective.