WWE RAW, 16th September - 5 talking points

Triple H stripped Daniel Bryan of the WWE title

The fallout RAW after a disappointing Night of Champions seemed to be a better show than the PPV itself. Though WWE has managed to keep the quality of PPV high this year, Night of Champions somehow didn’t compete with the others. However, RAW made full use of everything that the PPV had to provide. It fueled the corporation feud until Survivor Series and has done well with the other storylines too. Looks like we are in for a great year of WWE ahead of us.

Speaking of this week’s episodes there were a lot of new developments and storyline twists that WWE had to deal with. We will look at them as our 5 talking points of the night.

1. The WWE Title doesn’t have a champion

Daniel Bryan surprised everyone by beating Randy Orton on Sunday, but had some help from Scott Armstrong who made a fast three count. While it went unnoticed on Sunday, Triple H made sure it didn’t get overlooked on RAW. He called the tainted referee out and asked him the truth to which he confessed about Bryan asking him to count fast and let him win the match. Subsequently, Scott was fired and Bryan stripped of his title.

However, as most of us expected Randy Orton wasn’t reinstated the title back which is an interesting move by WWE. The so called face of the company that Triple H supports outright wasn’t given the title. He was instead asked to earn it back. Does this mean we will have some kind of a tournament to decide the winner? Let us hope so. I would love to see a King of the Ring type tournament happen on RAW next week.

2. Big Show chooses the lesser evil for Dusty Rhodes

The American Dream’ Dusty Rhodes was invited over twitter by Stephanie McMahon to talk terms about her son’s contract. As expected Stephanie didn’t play fair and asked Dusty to choose between her two sons. Unable to make a choice, Dusty refused to answer. So Stephanie then gave the Hall of Famer two more choices either the Big Show KO or the Shield Triple Powerbomb. Dusty looked pretty old and worn out already and there was no way I was going to imagine him taking a Triple Powerbomb. As expected Big Show stopped the Shield who were egging him to KO Dusty with chairs in their hand. Considering this the lesser evil of the two Show KOd Dusty with a punch and carried him to the ambulance backstage.

It was nice to see Dusty Rhodes who still has that aura around him. From the looks of things let us expect the Rhodes Family now to be involved largely in this corporation feud.

3. Ryback is Paul Heyman’s newest client

This was pretty obvious after Sunday and Paul confirmed that on RAW with a hearty kiss to the big man. Paul and Ryback look like a great combination and the second best after his association with Brock. Though there is no way that Ryback can match Lesnar’s intensity and charisma, both these wrestlers have been presented as monsters. This makes CM Punk‘s path of getting to Heyman all the more difficult.

However, as the pairing between Heyman and Ryback looks great the same doesn’t apply for the pairing between Punk and Ryback. We have seen these two wrestle quite a lot of times and another match between the two will only make things look stale. Let’s hope there is something interesting down the road in this feud.

4. Randy Orton uncoils the viper within

Remember when Orton turned face and his killer instincts as the viper vanished ever since? Yes, that gave birth to a new Randy Boreton. Orton was one of the most loved heels until he turned face and after 2 years of complaining Randy was finally made a heel again. But the killer instinct still hadn’t returned and his loss paved way for that.

Hunter and Stephanie used Orton’s title loss as a means to make him the destructive villain that he used to be once. By not reinstating the title and asking him to earn it WWE has allowed the Viper to return. Orton immediately struck as he annihilated the Miz in the ring and injured him pretty bad.

The timing of this move was great from WWE and the fact that they used the homeboy Miz to get beat down surely would have generated a lot of heat for Orton.

5. Finally some help for Daniel Bryan

For over a month, the fight against the corporation has been a one man show. Daniel Bryan has been the only man to stand up against Triple H’s regime without any support from others who too shared the same emotions. However, things changed for good this week as all the faces in the roster made their way into the ring and cleaned house after the Shield and Orton were planning to destroy Bryan.

A huge showdown at the end of the show meant that we are in for a great showing from SmackDown this week and RAW next Monday.