6 Ups & 8 Downs From WWE Raw (Sep 20)

3. PPV Booking On The Fly

You can make the argument that the situation that unfolded in the opening match dictated what happened afterward, but there’s no getting around the fact that WWE is asking us to believe that the Raw GMs essentially booked a PPV-quality main event on the fly one hour into a three-hour program.

Adam Pearce and Sonya Deville made it official at the end of the first hour, booking Bobby Lashley versus Big E versus Roman Reigns in a triple threat after Lashley attacked both champions after their six-man tag match. The booking made sense overall, but it was yet again another Raw main event booked well into the program rather than being announced and sold.

We probably should have seen that coming once the six-man tag between the New Day and Bloodline opened the show instead of closed it. Still, a normal company would have made that same match for the following week’s Raw, or if they wanted to, they could have done it for SmackDown and sent Big E and Lashley over there to try to pop a rating.

Instead, we almost are afraid to ask: What was going to main event Raw if not for this fracas in the six-man tag match?