This week’s RAW comes from Manchester, UK! I should have been in attendance, but I completely forgot to get a ticket! Either way, we are two weeks away from brand warfare at Survivor Series and the RAW brand still has 3 slots available for the women’s team. Let’s see what happened on this week’s RAW Redux!
Asuka is out for another squash match. This week her challenger is Stacie Coates, also known as Isla Dawn. Nothing much to say here, Asuka dominated Coates with strikes and an Asuka Lock. After the match, a pre-recorded interview plays with RAW Team Captain Alicia Fox saying that Asuka takes the second slot on her team for Survivor Series!
Backstage, Sasha Banks and Bayley catch up with Mike Rome to walk about getting the final two slots on the RAW Survivor Series team. Bayley reminds everyone that she was a sole survivor on last year’s team, while Sasha reminds everyone that she’s a 4 time RAW Women’s Champion. Bayley says that Alicia needs to be reminded about them, so this week they take on Nia Jax and Alicia Fox in tag team action.
Loads of “Hey Bayley!” chants, since they originated from our side of the pond anyway! It’s nice to see that Bayley can still get some love from the fans! The match is a fun dynamic with Sasha and Bayley playing the underdogs against Nia’s strength and Alicia preying on the scraps. Bayley tends to take most of the beating, until she gets the hot tag to Sasha. The end of the match comes when Sasha and Bayley throw Nia out of the ring, Alicia tries to roll up Sasha but Sasha kicks out and manages to lock the Banks Statement! Alicia taps out and it seems that Sasha has proved herself. Foxy takes to the microphone to admit that she wants ‘and needs’ Sasha to take the 4th slot on the RAW Survivor Series team! Sasha celebrates, but it looks like Bayley still need to do some work.
Finally, Charly Caruso interview RAW Women’s Champion Alexa Bliss about her upcoming match against SmackDown Women’s Champion Natalya at Survivor Series. Alexa reminds everyone that Natalya didn’t win any Championships when Alexa was on SmackDown and then reminds her that she’s the only woman to win both the RAW and SmackDown Women’s Championship titles. Alexa reminds us that she’s still the one and only Goddess of WWE.
Thoughts: So if you read my thoughts sections, you’d know that I’m a fan of the Survivor Series match-up. However, I think the WWE have single handedly killed that excitement with one move that they made tonight… Asuka should not be involved in the match.
In one swoop, they’ve given away who’s going to win this match, made her ‘another woman’ on the roster instead of a separate buzz and it also takes away a spot from someone else *cough cough* Bayley or Mickie James, who would be much more suitable addition to the match. All of this reminds me of what they did with Nia Jax in last year’s match, as she was in a very similar position. Nia was beating jobbers, hadn’t really mixed it up with the other girls, then squashed the SmackDown team until she was taken out with a sloppy Double DDT and a Dis-arm-her.
We are pretty much in the same position, except that Asuka will probably get the victory to maintain her streak. Sure we can say that technically she lost that battle royal in early 2016 in NXT, so she wouldn’t be losing a singles match… but that taints the record so much. It’s like someone having a record for ‘Most victories via DQ on No Mercy PPVs’. It also just squashes the work of the SmackDown women’s division, who are all a pretty strong crop, but we now know that a couple of them will be eliminated via an Asuka Lock.
In regards to the final position, it looks like it’s going to go to Mickie James and this should hopefully kickstart a program for Bayley to be the victim. She desperately needs the character refreshment, but in this case her only enemy is going to be Alicia Fox… I’m all for Foxy’s push, but it’s highly unlikely that this is going to go anywhere after Survivor Series. Bayley being left off one of the more interesting matches of the year for what… a kick-off match before a PPV against Alicia Fox? At least Mickie James gets to remain in the public eye while her character is hot, but this move may backfire for Bayley unless this leads to something.
Overall, my interest in Survivor Series is now mainly focused on the title matches… and that has had hardly any build up so far, so let’s see if that makes it onto the PPV. Unless Dana Brooke takes it into the 5th slot, then this elimination match will need a lot to surprise me.
Are you happy about the additions to the RAW team? Who do you think will get the final spot on the RAW team? Do you think RAW will jump SmackDown tonight? Send us your comments below!
