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Monday Night Raw wrapped up a four-night weekend in Chicago tonight as the company delivered an interesting show following their embarrassing loss at Survivor Series. Raw was only able to pick up one victory as part of this year's brand dividing show which was part of the kick-off show where the Raw Tag Team Champions, The Viking Raiders, won their triple threat match.
The rest of the show was mostly dominated by NXT and Seth Rollins decided that it was time to get Raw back in order. The Architect teased a heel turn yet again after months of teasing, and he even called out CM Punk, before Kevin Owens decided to silence the former Universal Champion.
Authors of Pain made their in-ring return after weeks of teasing, whilst Lana sunk to new levels to humiliate Rusev. Whilst this week's episode of the show was a stacked affair, there were a number of noticeable mistakes throughout.
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#3 Earlier tonight?
Lana and Rusev continued their ongoing issues this week on Raw. Lana was onhand to lead Bobby Lashley to the ring for his match against Titus O'Neil and this allowed the company to show that Lana had filed a restraining order in Chicago as well, which meant that Rusev wasn't actually allowed in the building for tonight's show.
The segment showed Rusev being served by a man pretending to be a fan, but in the corner where it should have said earlier tonight, it actually said: "Earlier Tongiht" which shows just how quickly WWE tried to edit this piece of footage in order to get it out on the show.
Rusev invaded the match with Lashley and O'Neil despite not being allowed to be in the building and delivered a punch to Lashley. But many eagle-eyed fans noticed that the move was miles away from its intended target, but Lashley still bumped it.
#2 Exhaustion was obviously setting in
Paul Heyman has been the executive director of Raw for a number of months now and it's become clear that many stars have been working with The Beast's Advocate on promos, whilst it's also become clear that many others haven't.
Promos have always been the weakest part of Raw's arsenal and this week was no different since a number of stars tripped over their words on the mic. Seth Rollins kicked off the show by delivering a speech to a deflated locker room, where he repeated himself whilst berating Authors of Pain.
Charly Caruso later caught the bug when she interviewed Rollins backstage about his upcoming match with Kevin Owens where she tripped over her lines and Rollins then got tongue-tied when issuing the challenge to Rollins.
AJ Styles cut a promo after he attacked Humberto Carrillo, and he managed to botch his lines as well. Either it was a long weekend for all the stars involved which is why the promos this week were not at a good standard, or Paul Heyman needs to book all his stars in promo class as soon as possible.
#1 Did the referee count the three?
Rey Mysterio competed in his third match in less than two days when he took on AJ Styles for the United States Championship on Raw. Mysterio won the right to face Styles when he defeated Ricochet, Randy Orton and Drew McIntyre in a fatal four-way match to name a number one contender.
Mysterio pinned Ricochet before moving on to face Styles in a match that was as high octane as expected. The Master of the 619 was on a roll and looked like he could win the match, but Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows stopped him in his tracks with a beatdown whilst the referee was knocked out.
Randy Orton came out to make the save before delivering an RKO to Styles, which was the catalyst to a Mysterio victory, but it appears that the referee may not have performed a legal count.
Was this so that Mysterio and Styles can feud heading into TLC or was it another referee botch much like the miscount at Survivor Series? All will become clear next week on Raw if Styles pulls up the referee's botch.
