The following are spoilers for tonight’s episode of RAW, courtesy of PWInsider:
Roman Reigns vs. Samoa Joe is planned for tonight’s main event.
The official return of The Revival. They are set to face Enzo and Cass
Miz TV segment – It will focus on Maryse and the Intercontinental Championship.
Check back here at 8PM ET for our live play-by-play coverage of the event.
The Miz recruited both Curtis Axel and Bo Dalls to join him as part of a new stable on RAW. They will be going by the name The Entourage. For those who didn’t witness tonight’s show, Axel and Dallas dressed up in bear costumes and attacked Dean Ambrose in a segment where The Miz failed to get on Maryse’s good side again.
Russo is joined on today’s show by his co-host Jeff Lane and Glenn Gilbertti (Disco Inferno).
Russo opens today’s show speaking about the announced match between Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather. Russo thinks that McGregor’s youth could play more of a factor in this bout than people think, but Gilbertti says that McGregor has no chance in this fight whatsoever. Mayweather might be 40 years old, but he’s still in terrific shape and his age will not be a factor in this fight.
Russo believes that since this fight is scheduled for August, the hype surrounding it will have a negative impact on WWE and their build towards this year’s SummerSlam. Gilbertti doesn’t believe WWE will be affected by that because they have their niche audience, and those people are going to watch the product anyways.
Even though WWE’s television ratings continue to decline, Gilbertti doesn’t think WWE really cares about the ratings at this point, as long as their WWE Network numbers are still strong. The Network is their new major revenue stream, and the television ratings have taken a back seat. Gilbertti mentions that it’ll be interesting to see what happens to WWE’s shrinking ratings once Brock Lesnar and John Cena retire, because they’re WWE’s two biggest stars right now.
As seen at Sunday’s WWE Money in the Bank during the Money in the Bank Ladder Match, WWE had a spot that saw AJ Styles and Nakamura square off in a little one-on-one action near the closing moments of the match. Bryan Alvarez discussed this angle on today’s installment of Wrestling Observer Live and indicated that this spot was done to setup a match between the two at a future date — presumably at this year’s SummerSlam.
As of this writing, the following matches are being rumored for the show:
Brock Lesnar vs. Braun Strowman
John Cena vs. Jinder Mahal
Triple H vs. Kurt Angle
AJ Styles vs. Nakamura
With WWE holding for back-to-back shows in the row at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, they are expecting to make this show as big as possible. Those events include NXT Takeover: Brooklyn III on August 19th, SummerSlam on the 20th, RAW on the 21st and SmackDown Live on the 22nd.
We noted earlier today that Kevin Owens apparently got hurt during the Money in the Bank Ladder Match and was helped to the back following the bout.
In an update, Dave Meltzer of Wrestling Observer Newsletter reports that he is fine and there is nothing serious wrong with him. Owens is still scheduled to work this week’s SmackDown Live event in Dayton, Ohio.
Well, this was bound to happen but it looks like three more individuals are done with Impact Wrestling.
Shane Helms indicated on Twitter that he’s done with the company and moving on in life. He indicated in one of his tweets that he wasn’t going to “kiss ass” to anthem. This would suggest that there may have been differences between the two.
Helms had been working in a backstage capacity since joining the company in 2015. He also had a role on TV as the manager/mouthpiece for Trevor Lee and Andrew Everett.
In addition to Helms leaving the company, PWInsider reports that long-time producers/agents Al Snow and Pat Kenney are on their way out the door. The reason that they are leaving the company was a financial decision.
Steve is the Founder of RingsideNews, AllWrestlingNews, and Wrestling dot News. He has been writing about professional wrestling since 1996. He first got into website development at the time and has been focusing on bringing his readers the best professional wrestling news at it’s highest quality.
Many of you are aware now that John Cena is being billed as a “free agent” and the company plans to have him work both RAW and SmackDown brand shows moving forward.
Cena has just been announced for the first RAW-brand event for July 15th at a WWE Live Event. Cena is scheduled to face Bray Wyatt on the card. It is possible that the company starts adding him to even more RAW and SmackDown events as he gets closer to his July 4th return to the company.
