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What you need to know
Down went The Shield! A stipulation handpicked for the tag team champs by Chief Operating Officer HHH - making their title defense against Cody Rhodes and Goldust no disqualification, thereby allowing United States champ Dean Ambrose to interfere early and often - backfired when The Big Show rolled into Raw incognito, or as undercover as a seven footer can get. Some well-placed right hands and the Hounds of Justice were light two title belts.
Randy Orton doesn't like the special guest referee for his match at Hell in a Cell. In addition to Shawn Michaels, some other things that the Viper doesn't like include Daniel Bryan, Daniel Bryan's fiancé, anyone who looks like Daniel Bryan's fiancé and the unused training room equipment.
CM Punk beat Curtis Axel and the clock (due to some creative help by his new pal R-Truth) and got to name the stipulation for his Hell in a Cell match against Ryback at the pay-per-view (PPV). He chose a handicap match, with DAT NUMBERS GAME favoring his opponent. Why, you might ask? Because it gets him some alone time with his nemesis, Paul Heyman.
Alberto Del Rio has been cozying up to the McMahon-Helmsley/Levesque's lately. I guess he figures he may want some help retaining his World Heavyweight Championship (WHC) now that Mr. Hustle, Loyalty, Respect himself, John Cena, is coming after it.
Zeb Colter questions whether Los Matadores are legal immigrants, and probably whether or not El Torito is USDA approved. The Wyatt Family hates The Miz because he's a fame whore. So they're a lot more like you or me than we thought.
What to look out for
As always, previews are spoiler-free, but Cageside Seats can tell you all about what went down if you click right here.
CM Punk will be in Kansas City and appearing on the show that airs Friday nights onSyFy! Remember when Punk was always on Smackdown? Those were simpler times... Now, instead of watching him torment Rey Mysterio's family, we'll undoubtedly have to watch his surrogate family fall further and further apart.
Speaking of families, how will the new tag champs celebrate their win? Maybe more importantly, how will Seth Rollins and Roman Reigns respond to their loss? Dean Ambrose barely held on to his belt against Dolph Ziggler on Main Event...will he or their benefactors pressure Dean's brothers-in-arms to get theirs back?
Will Big Show reveal how he evaded the cops to intricate himself in Monday night's main event? Or why he left that Stan Musial fan hanging? Now that AJ Lee is cleared for action, will Brie Bella get back into pursuit of the Divas title, or just keep playing damsel in distress?
What they should do
Give us some character development for the General Managers, Brad Maddox and Vickie Guerrero. Despite both being appointed with The Game's blessing, the pair seem to lean babyface in all of their interactions with the roster that occur without Mr. or Mrs. Aitch hanging over their shoulder.
Beautiful Brad has been as much of a foil for Paul Heyman as CM Punk. Vickie is acting almost as a proxy for John Cena (of all people) in the WHC program right now. Is it just a case of Creative being lazy, or is there something more to it?
Both have ties to Vince McMahon from his last run as an on-screen character. Guerrero was the Chairman's choice to run Raw, and Maddox was who his back-up plan when the Cerebral Assassin voted the Cougar out of the post. It would be an interesting wrinkle, and show a good deal of forethought, if the GMs were positioned as Mr. McMahon's advance troops in his oft-rumored power struggle with his daughter and son-in-law. I had to dig pretty deep to come up with the seeds for this idea; maybe they can start to sprinkle them closer and closer to the surface as we get nearer and nearer to the return of the Boss.
That'd be cool. Would also like to see them get ready for whatever they're going to have Punk do after he gets his hands on Heyman at Hell in a Cell. Because as surprised as I am to say it, I am ready for that program to be over.
What we're afraid they will do
Job the Rhodes brothers out to any and everybody, or possibly just hot shot the copper belts back to The Shield. Although, I'm not sure who there is to job them out to. With The Real Americans getting face reactions on account of Antonio Cesaro, that pretty much just leaves 3MB and Reigns & Rollins as the only heel teams on the roster, right? (Remember when the rumored reason why The Rhodes Scholars couldn't win the belts was because there were no face teams for them to feud with?)
So, yeah, probably just have them lose them back to Roman and Seth.
Monday night's main event involved most of the big stories in WWE right now - will they use Smackdown to answer some of the questions raised?
You can probably just find out by clicking that spoiler link above, but it would be more fun to find out with your Cageside pals in the live blog tonight!