Why Last Week's WWE Raw Underwent Major Changes
Original main event could have tapped different participants for Elimination Chamber.
Learning that last week's WWE Raw's script underwent last-minute changes is like hearing that water is wet and JBL is a miserable old cur.
However, Fightful Select is reporting that the January 31 episode of Raw looked quite a bit different in earlier drafts in a few spots than what finally aired.
The final revision of the show - which wasn't distributed until shortly before airtime - had Dolph Ziggler facing the Street Profits' Montez Ford. But the decision-makers "were smartened up" to the fact that Ford's partner Angelo Dawkins hails from Cincinnati, where the show was emanating from last week. So the match was switched, and we got Dawkins/Ziggler instead.
But the biggest change from original plans was a Raw main event that the report indicates was supposed to be a five-man match to determine the final four participants in the Elimination Chamber match for the WWE Championship, with champ Bobby Lashley and Brock Lesnar already locked in. Seth Rollins, Damian Priest, AJ Styles, Kevin Owens and Austin Theory would have battled in the main event, with the person losing the fall to be excluded from the Chamber match. That would have guaranteed at least one different person in the Chamber than the eventual lineup.
That setup was very different from what we got, with Rollins automatically being included and three qualifying matches that saw Styles defeat Rey Mysterio, Theory beat Owens, and Riddle topple Otis. Interestingly, Priest didn't appear on Raw at all last week.