More Details On Vince McMahon Changings WWE Raw And SmackDown Last Minute
Authors of Pain were scheduled to go deep in the Tag Team Turmoil match.
News broke after this week's episodes of Raw and SmackDown that an increasingly despotic Vince McMahon (is that possible?) once again had his big eraser out at the eleventh hour, changing plans left, right and centre before the shows went to air.
It was previously reported that The Authors of Pain had been lined up for a Raw return as part of its Tag Team Turmoil match, only to see their place nixed. We've since learned that the burly pair had been set to go deep into the contest, only to succumb to eventual and actual winners Robert Roode and Dolph Ziggler.
Ultimately, their place was taken by The Viking Raiders, whose scheduled squash match was slashed to allow them to enter the main event.
To compensate for the lost time, The Miz and Baron Corbin's King of the Ring encounter was stretched to ten minutes. Brill.
Conversely, Chad Gable's match on SmackDown the next night opposite Shelton Benjamin was cut from twelve minutes to just a quarter of the time. The show was said to have been largely written last minute by McMahon - who wasn't actually present.
In spite of McMahon's changes this past Monday, this week's Raw was reported to be amongst the smoothest in months. According to PWInsider, very few other alterations were made to the script besides the ones listed above.