5 things that could happen on RAW next week

The time is almost here. We are almost down to the wire -- there’s only one episode of RAW to go until WrestleMania. This week’s show wasn’t bad and the three hours flew by pretty quickly to me, but it was a below average show.Not much excitement, and if they didn’t have any of the matches, the show wouldn’t have been any different. All of them were inconsequential and none of them were better than “okay”. Not quite the show that you want to put on when you only have 13 days until the biggest show of the year.Hopefully, they do better next week. So, what did I expect to happen this week? Let’s see what I wrote and how I did.- Braun Strowman beats Sheamus, chooses Big Show as his tag partnerStrowman did indeed defeat Sheamus, but they still haven’t revealed Braun’s partner. I’m still not sold on having him choose someone like Curt Hawkins or someone random at the last minute.Anything other than someone legitimate just further devalues the tag team division on RAW. As it is, it’s only hanging on because of how amazing Sheamus &amp; Cesaro are as champions. The rest of the division is a joke. Let’s not make it a bigger joke.- Ronda Rousey actually appears in a live segment during the showYeah, it happened, and it was as awkward as you might expect. Ronda and Kurt are cheesy. Plus, Kurt has lost about 90% of his speaking ability and Ronda should not be on television. I don’t understand why they didn’t prepare for this. What the hell was she busy with?Her in-ring training is too little, too late, and I don’t care if she’s a long-time wrestling fan because it clearly hasn’t helped her understand what it means to perform as a wrestling character. I expected them to save another face-off with HHH and Stephanie for next week, and that’s exactly what they’re doing.- Nia Jax defeats Mickie James while Alexa does commentaryThe match happened exactly as expected. Was this match announced last week? I feel like it was, but I can’t remember. Either way, I would have kept Alexa on commentary instead of having her trying to help Mickie win.There’s no way they were going to be able to do enough damage to Nia in order to “wear her down” before WrestleMania, and it doesn’t make any sense for Alexa’s character to care much about anybody she’s associated with.She’s using Mickie just like she used Nia, and Mickie clearly doesn’t know, so there was no need for Alexa to feign allegiance to her by being ringside. And again, it makes no sense to have Alexa choose to be anywhere near Nia. She has spent the last two weeks running away from her like her life depended on it (because it does, pretty much), so why give Nia another opportunity to possibly get her hands on you?It’s things like this that display WWE’s ineptitude. It’s such a simple concept. Alexa is physically scared of Nia and talks a big game, so you have her far away from Nia while continuing to run her mouth. Instead, they had her get physically involved. It’s just stupid.- John Cena beats Kane with little difficulty, Undertaker stays silentHe didn’t beat Kane easily, and it was actually a fairly decent match after the commercial break. The beginning was rough, but if they skipped all of that and the whole match was just everything after the commercial, it would have been a darn good short brawl.In any event, I liked Cena doing the chokeslam and Undertaker’s classic sit-up as well as the throat slash. That was a nice touch. As expected, Undertaker was completely silent.- Paul Heyman and Brock Lesnar cut an in-ring promo and Roman isn’t on RAWMan, I almost nailed this one. Paul indeed revealed that he just put a few guys in outfits that said “US Marshal” on them to fool Roman and allow Brock to beat him up.They teased that Roman wouldn’t be there, but it turned out that he did show up, only to get beat down by Brock again. And, shockingly, the crowd was happy to see Lesnar beat him up again, this time using a chair and adding the steel steps to the equation.I’m so excited to see and hear the crowd’s reactions during the match in NOLA and I’m especially excited for the reaction to the conclusion of the match. Unless WWE decides to have Roman turn heel due to all of the abuse he’s been receiving (both physically by Lesnar and verbally by the crowd), the reaction will not be the one WWE is looking for.Overall, I went 3.5 out of 5, which is my best performance yet. This was an extremely paint-by-numbers, predictable show. That’s not always a bad thing, but this week it was.I get half a point for Braun beating Sheamus, a full point for Rousey showing up, half a point for Nia winning, a full point for Cena winning and having Undertaker stay silent, and half a point because Roman did appear, but everything else I predicted about the segment was dead on.Let’s talk about what I think might happen on the final RAW before WrestleMania...

5 things that could happen on RAW next week

#4 Finn Balor defeats Seth Rollins, protects him from Miztourage, then Rollins attacks