Things were chaotic at Raw this past Monday with rewrites going on as the show was happening. The show felt different for many reasons. Seth Rollins was supposed to be all over the show but his segments were cut down because he is still not cleared from his back injury. As noted earlier, Vince McMahon is reacting to the declining ratings and some of the moves AEW has been making. McMahon is also not happy about The Undertaker appearing at Starrcast II during Double Or Nothing weekend.
On Wednesday’s Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer talked about some of the changes that were happening before and during Raw.
Finn Balor was supposed to wrestle Ricochet but Triple H changed it for several reasons. Balor just won the Intercontinental title and it didn’t make sense to beat him. It also didn’t make sense to beat Ricochet so the decision was made to book Lashley and Lio Rush against Balor and Ricochet.
Vince McMahon got to Lafayette, Louisiana late around 1 or 2 pm. They also needed to rewrite the show because Seth Rollins was not cleared from his back issue. Rollins’ back injury is not serious enough that he needs surgery and he is expected to be cleared soon. Rollins appeared on the show but the original plan was for him all over the show.
They also had Ronda Rousey vs. Alexa Bliss booked for the show but that was changed to Rousey vs. Ruby Riott. The reason for this is because they needed more time out of Rousey’s match and they felt better about Riott and Rousey working together.
Meltzer added, “the actual script was not done until 30 minutes into the show, this sounds like Nitro. They were still changing the show into the second hour.”
As you can imagine, there’s a lot of confusion among the wrestlers and some unhappiness about the NXT wrestlers being called up because this means fewer roster spots. Click here to read more on how wrestlers reacted to the NXT call-ups.
