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Want to know what's happening in the major angles in WWE right now? Get eyes on our Raw preview and Reactions, since everyone knows Monday night is when the important stuff happens.
Want to know what is definitely happening on tonight's SmackDown from Portland, Oregon? Peep our spoiler post.
On Thursday mornings, we'll dig into the mid-card, the interesting and/or horrible stuff happening on the fringe away from your John Cenas and Brock Lesnars. Plus, pretend for a spoiler-free minute that we're the Legendary Teddy Long and guess at the blue brand's patented tag match of the week!
Don't turn your back on your brother, brother
The long-running blood feud between The Wyatt Family and the remnants of The Shield got so heated on Monday night that...Dean Ambrose & Bray Wyatt had to sit at opposite ends of the announce table while guest commentating on Roman Reigns victory over Luke Harper. The horror!
Dean celebrated with his brother after the win, and The Eater of Worlds waited for them to leave before cradling his vanquished prodigal son in his arms and screaming his catch phrase.
While the story started as a singles feud between Bray & Roman where Wyatt was dead-set on "anyone but" Reigns becoming the new face of WWE, since adding Harper & Ambrose, it's become more of a story about how much The Lunatic Fringe and The Big Dog love one another. And, as any long-time wrestling watcher will tell you, that usually isn't good news for their partnership.
What they should do: As Geno pointed out in our chat about this angle earlier this week, Creative has pushed the friendship between Dean & Roman so hard that he'll be swerved if one of them doesn't turn on the other in Brooklyn on Sunday.
That's certainly one way to book a surprise, but they could have us even more on the edge of our seats if they gave us a glimpse of the other way things could go. Anyone who has a sibling knows that brothers and sisters fight. If these two really are found family, they should butt heads more often
It's probably too late, but orchestrating a mis-understanding that resulted in a squabble between his opponents would a good way to make Bray look more like an evil mastermind and less like a garishly dressed supporting character in someone else's drama.
What we're afraid they'll do: Don't know about tonight, which my wishes from above aside, will probably be a paint-by-numbers affair on the last stop before SummerSlam, but I sure hope they don't plan to turn Ambrose heel in New York City. That is not the place to attempt to find sympathy for Reigns, and besides, having the guy you've built up as being part of a big, successful family as the betrayed just doesn't make sense.
Cero apuesta
Issues between Randy Orton & Sheamus date back to before the Money in the Bank ladder match that Sheamus won in June, and look like they will extend far beyond the mishandled attempted cash-in The Celtic Warrior went for two Mondays back on Raw.
Not many differences between Cesaro & Kevin Owens. Except: (1) you can say a lot of thing about how WWE has booked The Swiss Superman, but at least they never fed him to the John Cena machine, and (2) where KO (allegedly) gets made fun of for his weight, the former U.S. champ probably gets made fun of for having an accent. There are probably a million smart, interesting angles you can take with them being essentially the face and heel versions of a similar, internet darling-type. But after teasing those angles on an episode of Miz TV, they've gone back to essentially telling us to just be happy they're having matches against one another.
Kind of like the #DivasRevolution.
What they should do: If there were ever a couple of matches that needed some stakes to them, it would be these two pay-per-view (PPV) bouts.
The eighteenth straight iteration of Orton/Sheamus would be easy - make the Irishman put the briefcase on the line.
Little bit trickier for the Ring of Honor alums, but not too much. Given their history with the United States title, have the winner get a shot at the winner of Cena vs. Seth Rollins. Or, if the powers-that-be aren't willing to put them near the WWE championship, make them the next contender for the Intercontinental title.
What we're afraid they'll do: Just mash up these programs with the Wyatt/Shield one for a big tag match...oh, wait a minute...
The Theodore Long Honorary Tag Match goes to...
First it was Tough Enough ruining this bit, now it's announced-in-advance tag matches...like tonight's eight-man of Cesaro, Orton & The Shield boys vs. Owens, Sheamus & The Wyatts. Cause those foursomes seem like they'd get along really well.
But, apologies to Shelton Benjamin, ain't no stopping me! Let's reverse the stream and guess that tonight, they'll pull apart some of Sunday's multi-man matches to make singles contests. Big Show vs. Ryback seems obvious after Monday, and let's say Alicia Fox vs. Naomi out of the Divas trios Triple Threat.
Who cares what they do with the tag teams, as long as they give New Day some time to New Day.
(Note: I know some folks have come looking for a more definitive match listing - that will be posted behind spoiler text in the comments. If WWE.com releases more information on anything that's officially going to take place on tonight's show, that'll be updated here)