This week’s WWE Raw was my favourite episode of the year so far. Go and watch my WWE Raw…in about 4 minutes review for roughly 240 seconds why. But there was one storyline that didn’t feel as hot as all the others: the main event.
Bray Wyatt and Roman Reigns vs The League of Nations felt like a hangover from The Authority days. Babyface Bray aside, this was the flattest segment of the night, and they chose that to end the show.
Here’s how Raw should have ended…
First off, move the Wyatt/Reigns/League match to the end of the first hour, so it follows directly on from the Reigns promo that set it up. Two hours to wait for a Roman Reigns segment isn’t exactly the most enticing of teases.
A match between AJ Styles and Sami Zayn for the latter to be added to the Payback WWE Championship match, however, is. It keeps the WWE Title the main focus of the show, ends with two wrestlers the fans actually enjoy and it potentially sets up a new angle.
I love clean finishes, but I thought they missed a trick here by not having Kevin Owens cost Sami Zayn the match. It would’ve protected Zayn – although AJ did make him look really strong – and made the KO/Sami match even more heated.
Yes, I know Shane McMahon had Owens escorted from the building, but when has that stopped heels from coming back before?
So AJ and Sami are both down. The two are exhausted from a very competitive fight. Kevin Owens walks down, gets in the ring, looks down at Sami Zayn…and then forearm smashes AJ right in the face as Styles slowly stumbles to his feet.
Sami looked mortified. Owens is laughing. AJ wins by DQ. Owens has cost Sami the biggest opportunity of his life again.
Zayn goes for Owens, but he’s tired. He misses and Owens hits a pop-up powerbomb. Sami falls out the ring. Owens looks at AJ like he’s going to beat him up for good measure. He wants the No.1 contender spot for himself.
Then there’s a commotion in the crowd. Two bald, white heads can be seen running towards the ring. It’s Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson – AJ’s former teammates from the Bullet Club in New Japan. Where are they going to make more of an impact? Beating down the Social Outcasts and the Usos? Or interfering in the main event of Raw?
Gallows and Anderson are in the ring now, squaring up to Owens. Owens, for the first time in a long time, looks nervous. Both men tower over him. Then, just as AJ makes it to his feet, the two men turn and start beating him down.
Owens quietly slips out of the ring while the commentators shout about AJ’s history with Gallows and Anderson in Japan. Nothing specific, just something like ‘unfinished business’.
WWE Raw ends with Gallows and Anderson standing tall over the beaten body of the WWE’s number one contender.
Not only does this intensify Owens and Zayn’s feud even further and present Gallows and Anderson as far more significant than how they were actually debuted, there’s another dimension added into the Reigns/Styles title match at Payback. How will his history with the Bullet Club play into it? Is Reigns behind the attacks? Is there another leader calling the shots – Fin Balor, perhaps?
There are many different ways you can go with this angle, and that’s what wrestling cliffhangers should be about – multiple, equally valid options, all satisfying. It makes the following weeks building to Payback unpredictable, and adds a much needed side to its main event.
How do you think WWE Raw should’ve ended this week? How would you have booked Gallows and Anderson’s debut? Let us know in the comments.
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I’ve been Oli Davis and that was wrestling.
