26th October Edition Of The

Monday Night Raw & Wrestling News

Drew McIntyre opened the 26th October Edition Of The Monday Night Raw show, appearing totally fine after his 30 minute Hell in a Cell match the previous night. But he did say it hurt a bit. Because that’s what they always tell you, isn’t it? Tell, don’t show. Drew promised to be WWE Champion once again, so new Money in the Bank briefcase holder Miz interrupted to point out he successfully cashed in on Randy Orton a decade ago. Showing what a threat that is, McIntyre knocked both him and John Morrison out with one punch each. And then squashed them in a match later on in front of Matthew McConaughey in the Thunderdome crowd no less. It’s begun folks.

The commentary team are now promoting Survivor Series as ‘the one night a year when Raw and SmackDown stars go head to head’. Two weeks after SmackDown was main evented by its champion Roman Reigns against Raw’s Braun Strowman. It did give this episode’s matches some meaning, though, with many of them qualifiers to join Team Raw. Spots that were almost entirely fought over by guys who were on SmackDown just two weeks previously. ‘Brand loyalty’ is such a lazy booking crutch around this time of year. There needs to be something in it for the winning Survivor Series team.

AJ Styles advanced first beating Jeff Hardy, by using the power of THAT HUGE MAN at ringside. Elias hit Hardy with a guitar afterwards, so Hardy played his own music to distract Elias later on, letting Keith Lee beat him to advance. Keith Lee there, only just scraping through against Elias thanks to distraction. Elias’ Universal Truth album also reached the No. 1 spot on Spotify. Good for him. But not good for the gimmick. Because his character doesn’t work when he’s sincerely making generic music that the company promotes. His heel heat comes from his petty songs on babyfaces, and the non-heel commentators calling it out for being rubbish.

The final qualifying match of the show was a really hard-hitting bout between Sheamus and Matt Riddle. They’ve got great chemistry together. It’s just a shameful day lobster head that Riddle lost, making it two back-to-back defeats since moving to Raw.

The Raw Women’s team, however, didn’t have each spot decided by qualifying matches. Instead, definitely not Raw or SmackDown general managers Adam Pearce and Pat Buck simply announced Nia Jax, Shayna Baszler, Dana Brooke and Mandy Rose for the team, with the final member decided between Lana, Lacey Evans, Peyton Royce and Nikki Cross in a four way. Cross was by far the best, which meant she took the pin from Lana. It’s all pretty lame, but full credit to Nia, who’s created such a good heel character she seems to be feuding with everyone, including her own tag partner. She bickered about who was the Team Raw leader. She potentially started a relationship with Angel Garza backstage. And, of course, she put Lana through a table.

The 24/7 title division got a tag match with Drew Gulak and Akira Tozawa teaming together to take on Lucha House Party - which fell apart when they all tried to roll-up R-Truth. Comedy. Although I did get a kick out of Tom Phillips announcing ‘the Champ is here’ when Truth made his entrance.

After announcing Bobby Lashley will take on Sami Zayn at Survivor Series - reprising the all time great Bobby’s beautiful sisters feud - The Hurt Business took on the Biker Mice from Farts in an 8 man tag, whom they beat clean in the exact same match last week, now with eliminations, so every member can be pinned. But MehTribution had a secret plan… of Mia Yim having a fit in the ring, distracting MVP long enough to get rolled up, which sucked. Lashley and T-Bar then fought into the stands for a double countout. Mace was pinned. So Ali got himself a DQ elimination by hitting Cedric Alexander with a chair while outnumbered, and then ran away - cutting a promo later on that he will shut down the Hurt Business.

Running through the rest of the Survivor Series card, Xavier Woods and Kofi Kingston then did genuinely uncanny impressions of the Street Profits. We’re also getting the tag champions facing each other, Asuka vs Sasha, and Randy vs Roman.

The main event storyline started to steadily build Randy vs The Fiend first. But not before the Firefly Fun House course corrected Alexa Bliss’ outfit. Alexa made her Firefly Fun House debut last Monday in a black and red costume that was seemingly meant to resemble Bray’s doll version of her. But, as a portion of viewers joked, more looked like she went wild at Hot Topic in 2001. That costume appeared to be dropped for her appearance this week, where she was a lot more Harley Quinn like… so Hot Topic in 2018… with her own Play and Pain gloves, to match Bray’s Hurt and Heal ones. In their Firefly Fun House segment, Bray also gave her Fiend-like contact lenses for her to say ‘Let Him In’ too. But Bliss interviewing Randy in the show’s main event gave Bray some past projections… you know, the cockroaches on canvas kind… for which Orton was fully prepared. Randy was terrific, being very skeptical of Bliss and seeing it all as just a Fiend trap. But it was also a Drew McIntyre trap, who came down to brawl, the lights cut out, leaving McIntyre in the ring, Randy on the ramp, and The Fiend standing behind him. Orton was trapped between two very bad choices. But, brilliantly, he never looked over his shoulder. He could make the argument he never saw the Fiend. Or perhaps there’s a more psychological fuel, that The Fiend is powered by someone’s fear, so Orton not giving him that rendered Wyatt ineffective. But ultimately, Orton showed, didn’t tell, us his true thoughts. Because he chose to brawl with McInytre over the Fiend. Showing how scared he truly is.

What did you think of 26th October Edition Of The Monday Night Raw? Let us know in the comments below about 26th October Edition Of The Monday Night Raw. I really liked the Fiend and Orton build, and at least the Survivor Series matches had stakes. But the brand loyalty motivation is incredibly lazy, and the Retribution booking is profoundly disappointing.

Wrestling News

One of the more shocking results from Sunday’s Hell in a Cell was Randy Orton winning the WWE Championship for the 14th - 14th - 14th - I’m not going to do them all - time, ending Drew McIntyre’s reign that began at WrestleMania. A result that won me back my prestigious Championship. Thank you Viper Man. But this decision hasn’t gone down great with the WWE locker room. After being booked incredibly strongly all year, Orton was twice beaten clean in the ring by McIntyre in the last two months - losing to Drew at both SummerSlam and Clash of Champions, while also losing to Keith Lee in the middle at Payback. Fightful Select is reporting this has made wrestlers backstage question WWE’s booking choices. Earlier this year, Orton was praised for being on a career best run since turning heel on Edge at Royal Rumble, and then being booked strongly until August. But since SummerSlam he’s done nothing but lose - which makes his title victory now lack momentum. Wrestling news reporting he won to set up a third Orton vs Edge match at WrestleMania for the belt. But while Drew vs Orton was arguably the least best of the three cell matches on Sunday, the other two were absolute classics, and it’s now been revealed by Wrestling news which producers worked on those matches. The WWE Championship match between Orton and Drew was headed up by Joseph Parks - the former Abyss in TNA, aka AJ Styles’ amazing stats man - while Roman Reigns vs Jey Uso was produced by Michael PS Hayes, with sprinkles Paul Heyman input. And Bayley vs Sasha Banks was laid out by Tyson Kidd and Pat Buck. Hell in a Cell this past Sunday. Halloween this Saturday. It’s only fitting we now discuss the curse that’s haunted WWE this year… Vince McMahon being reportedly ‘high’ on you backstage.

Every single person - Humberto Carillo, Angel Garza, Aleister Black, Peyton Royce - who WWE or Vince McMahon has been apparently high on backstage this year have seen their pushes crash down on average three weeks after news sites report on it. And now we’ve got an update on one of them: the very tall Brendan Vink. He was used on Raw during the initial weeks of lockdown in a tag team with Shane SlapJack Thorne, and was even getting managed by MVP at one point, but then disappeared. He’s now revealed on Twitter that he’s moving back to NXT and changing his name to Tony Modra.

The viewership from last Friday’s SmackDown is in at a drastically low 881,000 viewers. This is because the show aired on FS1 instead of Fox because it was bumped by the World Series, so the low rating was expected. But in an interesting stat, SmackDown drew a .25 rating in the 18-49 demographic, whereas that same week’s Dynamite pulled in 0.3 - meaning AEW technically outdrew WWE’s biggest show. It’s a one-off circumstance though, and SmackDown is expected to return to around 2 million viewers on Fox this week.