After seeing this week’s episode of Monday Night Raw play out, WWE fans can conclude that Bayley is turning heel and aligning with Sasha Banks. WWE creative is having Bayley maintain her loyalty and close connection with Sasha.
I have two main thoughts about this:
- It’s refreshing to see a champion in WWE going through with a character change in the face/heel dynamic while they are in the midst of their title reign as opposed to waiting to make this switch until they lose the belt, which is usually what happens, but
- I’m not sure how well this will work out because Bayley has been built up so well as a babyface.
From WWE’s perspective, you never know how a drastic change like this will be perceived until you try it out. Even though this match got a main event spot, Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross felt like an afterthought because they were not a part of the storyline that was being focused on.
The reason Baron Corbin should be a consideration to win the King of the Ring tournament is that he consistently draws passionate reactions from the WWE universe. It does not matter if those reactions are positive or negative (most of them are negative. Corbin annoys me just as much as anyone else). What matters most is that he puts butts in seats and gets fans riled up which is exactly what WWE is looking for in the end.
Samoa Joe’s push to potentially become Universal Champion needs to start very soon given that he is already 40 years old (if WWE is serious about it). It’s not too late by any means, as we’ve seen it done recently by AJ Styles at about the same point in his career. Joe is one of those guys who always seems like a legitimate contender no matter what his booking situation looks like. Anyway, a great avenue to get his push started to get into contention for the Universal Championship could be through winning the King of the Ring tournament.
We all know Ricochet is going to be a huge star, because he’s being pushed like one very early in his career.
AJ Styles was very satirical in his promo on Monday Night Raw, giving Michael Cole a little attitude by ignoring him and pointing out that the only reason Braun Strowman got a title opportunity is that he looked at the Universal Championship. I also feel I need to address the possibility of Styles being added to the Universal Championship match at Clash of Champions, which would be a fantastic idea.
This could mean the United States Championship will be put on the backburner for the next couple months, but not to worry because every trend in WWE goes in cycles. This is also a sign of just how highly AJ Styles is viewed in the eyes of Vince McMahon. I don’t know if Vince originally viewed AJ in this light, but he deeply resonated with the WWE universe from the time he debuted in the Royal Rumble match in 2016. This week on Raw, we also seemed to get virtual confirmation that The Fiend Bray Wyatt will interfere in the Universal Title match at Clash of Champions and presumably go on to challenge the Universal Champion at Hell in a Cell.
Side Note: Congratulations to Walter on retaining his WWE United Kingdom Championship against Tyler Bate at NXT UK Takeover: Cardiff. The entire event was very well done and included some excellent matches. It also had to be a nice change of pace for Cesaro working the event.
Also, I feel I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Chris Jericho winning the AEW World Championship. I need to acknowledge them because they will indirectly serve as competition on Wednesday nights to WWE (even though they don’t really want to compete with or be compared to any other company). I love what they’re doing by trying to set themselves apart and do things differently than any other company has done before. I can also name at least five of their top superstars who formerly worked for WWE.