10 Burning Questions For WWE Raw (July 11th)
How will WWE capitalise on Brock Lesnar's dominant UFC victory?
Coming off a totally skippable (American) Independence Day
Raw, WWE has the unenviable task of tracking down, lassoing and hogtying the
hundreds of thousands who abandoned the program last week and trying to climb
back above 3 million viewers. Vince McMahon might brand them unpatriotic, but
fans would just brand the July 4th Raw as unwatchable.
Regardless, there’s a PPV to build to in the next two weeks, with one-third of the main event forcibly removed from television – but don’t worry, Roman Reigns will get his redemption song. Thankfully, WWE (World Heavyweight) Champion Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins are holding up their ends of the build-up to the first triple threat between the former Shield members just fine.
Challengers to both midcard titles look to be lined up on Monday, and the New Day will continue its strange feud with the Wyatt Family. Oh, and Vince McMahon will return to Raw Monday night, possibly to announce the new SmackDown head, or possibly to shovel more dirt on Reigns. And of course, there’s still a draft coming up next week, splitting the roster in half and changing the landscape forever.
With that said, there are plenty of questions WWE will need
to answer on Monday night. Let’s take a look at some of them…
10. Will Vince Announce SmackDown COO?
WWE has announced that Vince McMahon will be at Raw, with
the speculation that he might name the new SmackDown COO (not GM) a week in
advance of the program going live.
Of course, that speculation is just that, speculation. So far, we’ve seen John Laurinaitis, Corporate Kane, Teddy Long and Vickie Guerrero lobby to run the blue brand (or Raw, if the powers are so willing). Meanwhile, both Stephanie and Shane McMahon have staked a claim to running SmackDown in addition to their Raw co-GM statuses.
With SmackDown going live on July 19th, could Vince actually name the head of the program now, or is he just showing up to try to pop the ratings (and yes, it can be both)? Vince does seem to equal ratings when he’s away for a while, so let’s not discount the perpetual WWE theory that More McMahons = Ratings.