WWE Raw Preview: Brie Bella, Brock Lesnar, Stephanie McMahon
August 4th’s edition of WWE Raw will take place in Austin, TX in the Frank Erwin Center.
Rivalries should be moving forward for the next episode and we should see a finalized card announced.
Just Another Feud
As early as Friday, I had hope for the rivalry of A.J. Lee and Paige for the Divas Championship. Then this happened.
I can’t count on my fingers the amount of times they have had a Diva play a psychopathic heel role. From A.J. Lee’s heel run, to Alicia Fox, this has been done already.
Paige has gotten off to an okay start in the WWE. She had a boring face run due to poor booking and the fact that she’s more suited to be the enemy.
She needs to add something unique to this rivalry soon on WWE Raw to make this more appealing. It could be something special if the “craziness” of her isn’t emphasized too much.
Wy-2-J
The on-going feud of Bray Wyatt vs. Chris Jericho has been entertaining with the exchanges back and forth. They have been announced already for a re-match at SummerSlam.
Jericho’s match vs. Eric Rowan on Smackdown was interesting. It was a solid match overall but there was a stipulation that if Rowan lost, he could not be ringside for the SummerSlam match. He would end up losing the match. Expect Luke Harper to have a similar stipulation at the next Raw or Smackdown.
I’m predicting right now that Jericho will beat Harper but him and Rowan will still play a role at the PPV in a few weeks. It will end up with Wyatt winning with some help.
While I think Bray will win, it will not be a good thing for his character and a horrible booking decision from the creative team. He has to have a clean win at one of the year’s biggest events. He has been steadily falling due to a lack of a solid win at a PPV event. The last clean singles win at a PPV for the leader of the Wyatt Family was at Royal Rumble. That was nearly 7 months ago.
If Harper doesn’t face Y2J on WWE Raw, expect a series of promos hyping this match throughout the night.
Scouting Report
This new stable of Xavier Woods, Big E, and Kofi Kingston did not say a word last week and that is fine.
They were seen on Raw, scouting The Usos and Dolph Ziggler vs. The Miz and RybAxel.
It was interesting. The trio came off as businessmen scouting their competitors or a sports scout evaluating the talent to make a trade. While acquiring a fourth member from that group of six seems unlikely, I expect that they were scouting The Usos to foreshadow a tag team title match at SummerSlam.
This group is still a mystery, so there is not a lot to say about them right now. We’ll see how much we can say about them after WWE Raw.
Capture the Flag
So WWE announced that the match between Rusev and Jack Swagger will be a Flag match. While it’s a good thing that their battle of nations will be represented even more in this match, a flag match doesn’t thrill me.
Live Feed
FanSided
Were going to see these guys struggle to climb the turnbuckle to get a flag. WWE Superstars climb it with ease on a weekly basis. Rusev and Swagger will have to put together a great match to salvage this match’s gimmick. With this potentially loaded card, I don’t see that happening due to time constraints.
We will likely see another show of Zeb Colter and Lana battle it out with promos on WWE Raw. Let’s hope their talking puts some more intrigue into this match.
The Real World: Back to New York
The Miz and Dolph Ziggler have been battling for a few weeks now since Ziggler beat “The Moneymaker” in a non-title match on WWE Raw. Dolph has been hounded by Miz ever since.
An Intercontinental title match between these two seems all but announced for SummerSlam. Whether it’s on the pre-show or somewhere in the middle of the PPV, it has potential to shine.
While my preference would have been for a title unification with the U.S. title, that seems destined for Night of Champions or sometime beyond that.
Bad News Barrett was making the Intercontinental title relevant before his injury. While The Miz has done a decent job being champion, he needs to continue to bring this title back to its relevancy from earlier this summer.
Announce This Match!
Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins have been battling for two months now and the height of their feud will occur at SummerSlam.
We know that these two will battle it out but were just waiting for an official announcement and a stipulation. Hopefully it’s for the Money in the Bank briefcase that Rollins won at the MITB PPV. That will make this match extremely intriguing.
I’m looking forward to the continued build of this match. We’ll certainly see more punches and kicks exchanged on WWE Raw but we’ll see who comes out on top this time.
The Viper is on the Prowl
Finally, Randy Orton has woken up. He has the intensity in his fighting and the passion in his promos back. That’s what made him stand on top of the company for years.
His feud with Roman Reigns began after the former Shield member interrupted Orton’s walk to the ring on WWE Raw as he was about to be announced as the #1 contender for the WWE World Heavyweight title. Orton would then go on a vicious assault of Reigns one week later and leave him motionless on the ground from two RKO’s.
Everyone knows that this is a stepping stone for Reigns to get to Triple H but it’s nice to see that Orton is going to make himself look like a tough challenge.
One thing that Roman himself needs to focus on is his promos over the next few weeks in an attempt to outshine Orton because right now, he looks weak. That’s not a booking problem, that’s his problem. Expect him to cut a speech during Raw and hopefully show some improved work in response to “The Viper” on WWE Raw.
The Brie Movement
Brie Bella is getting her chance to shine against the boss, Stephanie McMahon. It was great to see their feud close out last week’s Raw. It was refreshing, heated, and very entertaining. We even saw a confirmed match for them for SummerSlam.
Nobody expects a greatly wrestled match. What we are going to see is a great story being told and a very entertaining fight. I am looking forward to it.
This feud is going to highlight a good chunk of WWE Raw again and keep the Divas division at the forefront. Wrestling fans should be and will be okay with that. It’s a toss-up to see which one will stand tall in the next part of the rivalry. That’s perfect drama for this.
The Beast In Hibernation?
As of now, it is not confirmed whether Brock Lesnar will be at the live WWE Raw. We know Paul Heyman will be there and we know that John Cena won’t be there due to movie commitments. Lesnar wasn’t on the show last week but Cena was. He battled Paul Heyman in the opening promos and had an awesome match with Cesaro.
When we get to the main event of SummerSlam for the WWE World Heavyweight title, the excitement and action will be there. I don’t think it will matter either way with how these next two editions of WWE Raw goes but progress in this feud is expected. If Lesnar is not there for Monday, Heyman will have to carry the load on his own.
What we do know is that everyone will be there on August 11th, the go home edition of WWE Raw before SummerSlam. We will dive into that more next week but that seems to be where the most progress will be made. For this week, however, we’ll have to keep our fingers crossed.
What do you guys expect from the next edition of WWE Raw?