5 things that could happen on RAW next week

I’m sorry, but this week’s episode of Monday Night RAW was the worst episode in a very long time. I cannot remember the last time it was so hard to get into a show, the last time it felt like it ran for 6 hours instead of 3, or the last time I just felt like the “powers that be” put in as little effort as humanly possible to make this a good show. I was extremely hyped up for the event, with the excitement of seeing RAW partially emanate from a room, the Manhattan Center’s Grand Ballroom, that I have seen so many live Ring of Honor events in person. It promised to be a great night with cameo appearances from a ton of legends and former stars, an Intercontinental Title match, the final push for the Royal Rumble PPV and the first appearance of The Undertaker in over 9 months, hopefully shedding some light on his future.Outside of the opening segment with Stone Cold and the McMahon family, which was amazing, the show was trash. That opening segment was so good and got me even more excited for the show, only for it to get worse and worse as it went by. Let’s get into what I predicted last week.- A big brawl between all of the women in the RumbleThis did happen for the most part. It wasn’t exactly what I was expecting, but they threw 8 of RAW’s 9 Royal Rumble match entrants in a tag match, which broke down to a brawl on the outside between 6 of them. Then, following the match, Asuka attacked her three teammates and threw them over the top rope. It wasn’t a bad segment, and it did give us some semblance of “every woman for themselves”, but not as much as I expected.- The Revival get beat up by some legendsWelp. Yeah. I think everybody called this one. In one of the final segments of the evening, DX returned along with Scott Hall and cut a painfully boring promo in front of an upset crowd at the Manhattan Center who paid a lot of money to see almost nothing worth watching. It led to Balor Club confronting but embracing, the legends in a cool moment. Then The Revival lost a 2-minute match to Gallows and Anderson and proceeded to get beat up by all 5 members of DX, Scott Hall, and Finn Balor. At least Finn and his guys were involved, so maybe they can build something off of that, but it effectively makes their promo about being “wrestlers, not sports entertainers” specifically a set-up for getting a beat down by some of the most prolific “sports entertainers” of all time.- Stephanie McMahon &amp; Triple H confront Braun StrowmanMuch like pretty much everything else on this show, Triple H was involved in nothing important, and neither was Stephanie. Triple H was involved in a boring, heatless segment and Stephanie was part of the only good one, but neither mattered and both will be forgotten by next week. It’s especially annoying that they didn’t even bother to address why Stephanie decided to rehire Strowman. Maybe they will explain it in the coming weeks, but it would have been nice for it to at least have been acknowledged in some way.- Tease of a Finn Balor heel turnNah. Again, I’m a fool for thinking that WWE would actually use this incredibly hyped-up show to actually make people want to continue watching their product. I have no idea what rating the show is going to get, but I would be willing to bet that more people watched RAW this week than usual by a decent margin, and WWE refused to capitalize, instead doing a bunch of boring, uninspired cameos and bad matches. Finn got to “Too Sweet” with the first guys who did it in the context of pro wrestling, which was cool, but it’s just another moment that will go unspoken, and thusly forgotten, very quickly.- The Miz wins the Intercontinental ChampionshipLike I said last week, this is the one thing that I was 100 percent sure would happen. I was right, of course. Roman may not win the Rumble on Sunday but he will be in the final four and they probably want more people to think he’s going to win, and taking the IC Title off of him now will help that perception. It was an okay match that got very fun down the home stretch with the crowd eventually getting extremely invested. Not nearly as good as the match in which Roman won the belt, but this was the only good match on the show and the only important event as well.Overall, I went 3 for 5, which is my best performance yet. I think a lot of stuff that happened on this show were givens, but I’ll still take it. Too bad the show was poorly structured and no the least bit exciting, or memorable -- and most importantly, they did almost nothing to hype up the second biggest show of WWE’s year. What might happen next week, during the fallout of the Royal Rumble PPV?#5 Brock Lesnar is still the champion but doesn’t appearBrock Lesnar hits the F-5 on KaneIt hasn’t necessarily been the case in recent history, but the conventions used to say that if you stood tall on the final RAW before the PPV, you were sure to lose your match. This week’s RAW ended with Braun Strowman standing tall after destroying Lesnar and putting him through the announcer’s table. That makes me think that he’s not going to win the title on Sunday. I already thought that, as did most people, I’m sure, but getting such a definitive advantage this week essentially chisels into stone that he won’t walk out of the Royal Rumble with the Universal Championship. Kane will likely be pinned by Brock Lesnar, as he was immediately disposed of within a matter of moments with a single F-5 and then disappeared for the final 5 minutes of the show. He was a complete afterthought.I expect that Brock will find some way to immobilize Braun and retain the title by pinning Kane. Next week on RAW, Brock is nowhere to be seen, but Braun is NOT happy. He didn’t lose the match, Kane did, and he wants another shot. He will be announced as one of the 6 participants in the Elimination Chamber next month, and the build for that will begin. I wonder if they will blow off the Kane/Strowman rivalry in the Chamber, or if maybe they will have one last one-on-one match, where the winner gets in the Chamber match and the loser doesn’t. I’d go for that.

5 things that could happen on RAW next week

#4 The women’s Elimination Chamber match is announced