Who Got WWE's Maria Pregnant?

Last night's episode of Raw was the first under Paul Heyman's purview, and already it exhibited many of the hallmarks of the experienced impresario's modus operandi.

Aside from a marginal increase in profanity à la ECW, what with Corey Graves dropping a dreaded 'S-bomb' unfiltered, we also saw the foundations laid of a fundamental shift towards long-term, programme-wide storytelling designed to entice viewers to both stick in their seats and tune in the next week.

One such nascent angle involved Maria Kanellis - who recently signed a new five-year contract with the company alongside husband Mike - preventing Becky Lynch from attacking her during a mixed-tag team match, when she grabbed the microphone to announce she was pregnant.

Flabbergasted, her hubby inquired of Maria how she could possible be up the duff, before the apparently gravid grappler mocked poor Mike for not being a "real man". The heavy implication was that either the pair were no longer intimate, or that Mike's soldiers were marching in the wrong direction.

The obvious question then: if not him, then who?

Of course, Maria - presumably - isn't really up the duff; she only just returned to action after giving birth for real. Truth is, we don't know where this storyline is headed, but what we do know is that it has the new Raw honcho's fingerprints all over it. Speaking on the latest episode of Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer noted that the angle was typical of Heyman, designed to both intrigue and retain an audience prone to switching off come the third hour.

It's for this reason that the show also opened with a vague teaser that The Undertaker might be in attendance - and sure enough, he was.

More than almost any plot you can imagine, a pregnancy storyline is implicitly long term, offering at least nine months' worth of intrigue (assuming WWE don't pull the dreaded Terri Runnels stunt - or that it's not a big ruse). Already, viewers are speculating; Maria's words specified that nobody in the building was 'man enough' either - could it be a returning superstar? A debut? Or someone else entirely?

Inevitably, some will decide it heralds the comeback of former boyfriend CM Punk - 'CM Spunk', in this case, we guess.

The details aren't immediately important. The biggest takeaway presently is that on night one of Heyman's tenure, WWE's creative process is already changing - and for the better. It might be the soapiest of stories outside a laundrette production of Shampoo, but at the very least it's something to talk about. Cue inevitable lists of potential fathers...