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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 Miami, Florida? 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 Stings. 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!
Dolph's Ding-a-ling
After battling to a double countout at SummerSlam, Dolph Ziggler and Rusev had gone their separate ways...mostly so The Show Off could take The Bulagrian Brute's former manager to Space Mountain (actual and Ric Flair varieties)
On Monday, they rematched, but when it looked like Dolph would ZigZag his way to victory, Summer Rae broke up the pin, triggering a cat fight with the Ravishing Russian. Her partner in acid wash pulled her away, and that's when the real fun started.
If you consider it to be fun when adults sneak into each other's locker rooms, strip naked, tell conflicting stories about the incident and then pout about it like they were 13 year olds at a sleepaway camp.
Tonight, Dolph and Lana will go on Dr. Phil Miz TV to try to learn to trust one another again. Something tells me it will not go smoothly...
What they should do: Shy of dropping the whole thing, the most likely, least offensive route they could take would be to steer clear of cheating and/or abusive partners and just camp it up. When The Hollywood A-Lister fails to broker a peace tonight, bring in Jerry Springer. Have that segment devolve worse than a contract signing, leading to the women's match or mixed tag that we should have gotten at SummerSlam.
Then, Rusev can complete his face turn by cutting a promo where he says that they've all been acting immaturely, so he plans to distance himself from the drama and focus on wrestling. As he walks up the ramp, he stops, says "how bout those relationship skills, though?", winks and continues to the back while Dolph, Lana & Summer look dumbfounded.
What we're afraid they'll do: Mostly afraid of where Summer's tweet could lead in terms of accusing Ziggler of wrongdoing, but for now I'll keep my fears campy, too, and hope that this doesn't lead to an old school match where the "services" of one or both women become the stakes of a match between the guys.
Our Celestial Majesties Request
Not much to catch up on in the world of Stardust, at least on television. He took his frustration regarding the pay-per-view (PPV) loss to Stephen Amell out on Cosmic King Barrett, apparently sending the former Bad News into a movie-making time out from wrestling.
From there, it's largely been cyberspace for The Strange One. He and the star of Arrow continue to take shots at one another across social media, and he even teased fans by giving them a vote on whether or not he would return to his Cody Rhodes persona.
Though the Amell angle got overshadowed by a bit by Jon Stewart's work in the title feud between John Cena and Seth Rollins, it still gave Stardust a higher profile than he's had since his debut, if not ever. Parts of the internet wrestling community are receptive to a bigger role for him...will WWE do anything with The Prince of Dark Matter?
What they should do: Give him some jobbers to beat, or better yet, have him interfere in matches involving babyfaces slightly above him on the latter...guys like Neville, Dean Ambrose, Cesaro, Ziggler, even old Cody nemesis Randy Orton.
Eventually, that would lead to singles matches with them - most of which he'd probably lose, because WWE. But in the meantime, it would allow him to cut more of his bizarre-yet-intense promos about tearing down legends and destroying heroes. Making him kind of a comic book-y version of young Orton's gimmick, and something with narrative momentum behind him when Green Arrow returns to the squared circle to stop him, once and for all.
What we're afraid they'll do: Leave him off television for another couple of weeks, then have a match that leads to a great speech in a Fallout video before being dropped all together. Basically, keep treating him the way Creative has for the past five years.
The Theodore Long Honorary Tag Match goes to...
They're already tag teams, but WWE seems intent on fast forwarding the program between The Dudleys and The New Day. And as long as it gives Big E, Kofi Kingston & Xavier Woods microphone time to put over furniture, that's actually okay by me.
Not sure how it makes any kind of sense, but ever since I thought of the idea of a match between Bubba Ray, D-Von, Ambrose & Roman Reigns against The New Day and The Wyatts, I can't get it out of my head. The babyface brothers would just be goofy fun, and a bit of a mark out moment, because it's always a kick to see Dean get excited for working with Legends.
And just imagine X trying to talk to Luke Harper or Braun Strowman, and E and Kofi helping him stay positive while he does. Who could possibly be sour with those things on screen?
(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)