WWE Raw preview (Feb. 6, 2017): Revelatory announcements

Next stop on the Road to WrestleMania is Portland, Oregon - and this could be a big one!

The Headliner

Coming out of last week’s show, and the Royal Rumble pay-per-view (PPV) that preceded it, we knew one of Mania’s main events hung in the balance. Brock Lesnar (through his mouthpiece Paul Heyman) responded to his latest humilating defeat at the hands of Goldberg by requesting one final battle with the WCW legend at the Showcase of the Immortals.

Now, I wasn’t the only smart-ass who responded, “why would Goldberg bother with you?” Did the former Atlanta Falcon come back to wrestling to accomplish a lot of things, or just the same one over and over?

He’ll respond to Brock, and let us know how WWE is tackling that issue, when he shows up on Raw this evening.

That’s the kayfabe-iest revelation we’ll get tonight, but not the biggest news flash. The question about the other one - Seth Rollins’ injury status - is how much of what they’ll tell us will be real, and how much of it storyline.

When Samoa Joe took Rollins down at Triple H’s behest to close last week’s show, it was supposed to set-up a match at the March 5 Fastlane PPV and at WrestleMania. If reports about Seth’s knee injury are correct (torn MCL, out for a minimum of eight weeks), the first of those is gone and the second is a long-shot.

Are the reports right, or might the Architect deliver a Finn Balor-esque goodbye on Raw? Will they play it straight and give us a real diagnosis of his second knee injury in the last fifteen months, or keep it cryptic - and in so doing keep their options open?

The title scene

Oh yeah, Kevin Owens is still Universal champion. Apparently he’s killing it on house shows by beating a guy in Sami Zayn who WWE told us won their feud for good last Summer. On television, he’s only managed to beat Roman Reigns when Braun Strowman interferes on his behalf, and vice versa. He is still incredible, but... whew. At least he still has a great best friend in Chris Jericho.

That best friend is the United States titleholder. Zayn beat Jericho in a non-title match last week, and if you’ve been watching WWE for any length of time, you know what that means.

In the pairs division, Karl Anderson & Luke Gallows finally won the big one on the Royal Rumble pre-show, and became tag champs! Their reward?

They got to back-up Women’s champion Charlotte in her six-person tag match against Bayley and the former tag titleholders, Sheamus & Cesaro! The Hugster helped those guys get on the same page, if only for one night, as she picked up another win against the Queen when the belt wasn’t on the line (see above about what winning non-title matches usually leads to).

Cruiserweight champ Neville avoided losing in a one of those situations himself by walking out on his partner Noam Dar during last week’s 205 Live. The King’s next feud isn’t clear - Rich Swann has a rematch owed to him, but he’s apparently dealing with an ankle injury - but keep an eye on either Cedric Alexander or Jack Gallagher, the men who technically have a win over him thanks to that tag match last Tuesday.

Other stuff to keep an eye on:

- Things are heating up in the Reigns/Strowman feud that will probably spin out of those guys’ issues with KO. And then there’s the much discussed possibility that Roman might be Undertaker’s next WrestleMania challenger...

- The return of The Game might also bring issues between commissioner Stephanie McMahon & General Manager Mick Foley to a head. She doesn’t think he’s doing a great job, and while there’s lots of evidence to support that, she might also be looking to get rid of him because he knows she can’t be trusted when it comes to her husband’s business dealings.

- Plucky former champ Sasha Banks is determined to beat Nia Jax despite being injured. It’s not working, and it also might be the thing that ruins her friendship with Bayley.

- After beating Rusev & Jinder Mahal in a tornado tag match last week, hopefully Enzo, Big Cass, along with the Bulgarian George Clooney, his wife Lana and all of us, can move on to something new.

- Emmalina?

Four weeks until Fastlane!

What will you be looking for on Raw tonight?