The pairing of Dominik Mysterio and Humberto Carillo as a tag team last week made perfect sense because Rey Mysterio – Dominik’s father – put over the young Carrillo about 3-4 months ago in a backstage interview on Raw by publicly endorsing the young superstar as one of the faces of Monday Night Raw for the next generation of WWE superstars.
Drew McIntyre has served as an extremely compelling babyface warrior WWE Champion over the past six months, the first since Kofi Kingston in 2019. Brock Lesnar was sandwiched between them from the first episode of SmackDown on FOX on October 4, 2019 until dropping the WWE Title to McIntyre at WrestleMania 36. There is always the chance that Lesnar returns to WWE at some point to recapture the WWE Championship.
Drew McIntyre issuing an open challenge for the WWE Title provided a perfect reason for Robert Roode, who has had an interesting six months, to say the least. He returned to his home country of Canada to be with family during the Covid-19 pandemic but was unfortunately unable to return to the United States due to travel restrictions. Dolph Ziggler provided the perfect segue into this segment because he has been a Raw Tag Team Champion with both McIntyre and Roode (most recently with McIntyre). McIntyre and Roode have a little history of their own from NXT when McIntyre defeated The Glorious One to become NXT Champion at NXT Takeover: Brooklyn 3 – once upon a time in August 2017.
On a separate note, “The Viper” Randy Orton cannot seem to let his issues with the legends (Shawn Michaels, Christian, Ric Flair, and Big Show) go. That’s why he is – The Legend Killer. Orton is almost guaranteed to win his 14th WWE Championship, it’s just a matter of when Orton can drop the WWE Title to Brock Lesnar seeing that these two men have history together from SummerSlam 2016.
Randy has earned major credit over the past few months for doing the one thing he has been somewhat criticized for over the course of his career – that would be putting over superstars unselfishly, the beneficiaries are people such as Drew McIntyre and Keith Lee. There is a high probability The Viper will become WWE Champion for the 14th time at Hell in a Cell on October 25, and at the same time put an end to Drew McIntyre’s nearly 7-month long title reign – and his first.
McIntyre proved that he is capable of carrying the company for the long haul, so expect him to stay at the top of the card. He is definitely a very introverted man who contemplates his actions before actually doing anything – which is very commendable.
The route WWE is going down for the WWE Title scene goes is almost an exact parallel to the direction the company went leading to WrestleMania 36 just a year ago. That year, Kofi Kingston won the WWE Championship from Daniel Bryan at Mania 35 and held the title until October when SmackDown debuted on FOX – about the same amount of time McIntyre will hold the championship this year – WWE is essentially going back to the well of what they did the prior year.
Once upon a time, there was a trio in WWE comprised of Ricochet, Apollo Crews, along with Cedric Alexander – with Mustafa Ali filling in occasionally for Alexander. So it was only logical for Ali to take Alexander’s place when he decided to join The Hurt Business. The events on Raw this week led me to believe that this alliance will bode well for Mustafa (who did lose his first name for a while before getting back). I will stay hopeful that Murphy will ultimately get the same treatment to get the pin in the six-man tag match on Monday night. This could provide Ali with a storyline he can sink his teeth into – something he’s been in need of for a couple of years.