What’s the story?
On last Sunday’s edition of Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer reported that the originally planned outcomes of two matches were changed at the last minute.
The background
There were a number of surprise results from Sunday’s Payback event, such as Chris Jericho defeating Kevin Owens for the United States Championship despite Y2J being scheduled for an imminent tour with his band Fozzy.
According to Meltzer, two other matches from this event had the finishes changed late on, possibly as late as the day of.
The heart of the matter
Speaking on his show, Meltzer stated that the outcome of the Cruiserweight Championship match between Neville and Austin Aries was changed last minute.
“The finishes were clearly out yesterday, and in two cases the finishes changed… In the [Neville vs. Austin Aries] match, Neville was supposed to win and then, I guess it would’ve been [on Sunday] they made the call to have Austin Aries win via DQ.”
In addition to this, Meltzer also claims that WWE went back and forth on the decision to crown Alexa Bliss as the new Raw Women’s Champion.
“And then in the Bayley vs. Bliss, I think it changed three times… It went from Bayley to Bliss… It changed four times actually. Bayley was gonna win, then Bliss was gonna win, then Bayley was gonna win, then Bliss was gonna win, and it ended up with Bliss winning.”
What’s next?
The finish to the Neville vs. Aries match seems to make the most sense for the WWE going forward. There isn’t a ready-made contender to take Aries’ place and challenge Neville for the title, so continuing their feud for another few weeks while they build up a new challenger was probably the best decision.
As for Bliss’ win, I was surprised by this result, not only because the match took place in Bayley’s hometown. We seemed to be heading into a Championship feud between Bayley and Sasha Banks in the coming months and while that may still happen, the immediate future of Raw’s Women’s division is unclear now that Bliss is the champion.
Author’s take
Last minute changes seem to be becoming more common in WWE nowadays, although in these cases, I’m not against the final decisions.
I am more than happy to see Neville and Aries have one more match for the Cruiserweight Championship as their last two bouts have been very good. Plus, Alexa Bliss has been very impressive recently and continues to vastly improve as an all-round performer week by week, so even though this was not a result I was expecting, I am interested to see where the Raw Women’s division goes from here.
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