WWE Raw preview (Nov. 19, 2018): Loud noises

Another night in Los Angeles!

The Headliner(s)

For a wrestler who spent the last seven days getting her ass kicked, Women’s champ Ronda Rousey had a great week. It was a little hard to tell by the reactions she got, however - despite the fact she sold like Dusty Rhodes for a pair of underhanded assaults by two SmackDown Superstars during the Survivor Series progam.

It sets the stage for an interesting future for The Rowdy One. Both of the women she wants to get reveng on work for the blue brand, so she’ll likely need to wait until January’s Royal Rumble for revenge. And while the closing scene of her match last night zoomed in on Ronda’s reaction as the Staples Center crowd celebrated Charlotte Flair’s brutal post-disqualification beatdown, one wrestler who got an even louder negative response is the woman who figures to be her next challenger - the winner of Evolution’s battle royal for a future title opportunity, Nia “Facebreaker” Jax.

This is where it gets really interesting. Jax’s new nickname, and nuclear heat, is for the punch she threw which took Becky Lynch out of yesterday’s pay-per-view (PPV) match with Rousey. The Man is beefing with both Nia and Ronda online. Will fans - at least the ones who buy tickets to “Big Four” PPVs and get the loudest/drown everyone else out - cheer the Raw champ as Becky’s avatar in a fight with the Facebreaker, then resume cheering her opponents when she eventually faces Lynch & Flair again?

And where do the rest of the Horsewomen fit in this? The rest of Ronda’s crew looks pretty entrenched in NXT right now. Sasha Banks has beef with Jax after Nia stabbed her in the back en route to winning the women’s elimination tag on Sunday night, and has formed a mutual admiration society with Rousey in shoot interviews.

It makes for a very messy scene in terms of potential crowd reactions, and a really interesting one for storytelling possibilities. The most important thing for Ronda, her potential allies & opponents and WWE’s women’s wrestling push is - cheer or boo, we fans care about these characters, and what happens between them.

The title scene

Meanwhile, the top men’s program finds itself in a familiar pattern coming out of Universal champion Brock Lesnar’s thrilling win over WWE champ Daniel Bryan... Braun Strowman ran roughshod over the competition in the men’s elimination tag, earning himself another shot at the Beast in the process. But we’ve seen the Monster Among Men come up short against Lesnar several times in the past, and there’s no on-screen or behind-the-scenes reason to think their next rematch will be any different.

The anticipated Dean Ambrose interference didn’t come, and Intercontinental champion Seth Rollins’ win over Shinsuke Nakamura was one of six wins for Team Red on the main card of Survivor Series. Now, the Ambrose match has been booked with a minimum amount of fanfare. What will Dean burn down next on the road to TLC?

DRAKE MAVERICK should have invested in some adult diapers, but hopefully now that he doesn’t have to worry about Big Show for a while - and AOP picked up a big win in their showdown of tag team titelists - he can control his bladder. With no clear #1 contenders for the belt on the horizon, who knows if Akam & Rezar will even make it onto our screens this week.

Other stuff to keep an eye on:

- Acting General Manager Baron Corbin saved his job with Raw’s clean sweep (not counting the Kickoff) of SmackDown at Survivor Series. The celebrating he did with Drew McIntyre, Dolph Ziggler, Bobby Lashley & Lio Rush will have to suffice for now, though, because Strowman is now free to kick his butt... and he has even more reason to after Corbin attacked him after the men’s teams win last night.

- It doesn’t look like Commissioner Stephanie McMahon has any kayfabe reason to be watching her back these days, though, so expect her to do it up after dunking on her brother’s show.

- Despite lagging behind the Monster in eliminations, McIntyre’s rise to the top continued last night. We’ll see if that means more beefing with Braun or a resumption of he & Dolph’s issues with Finn Bálor tonight.

- Babyface Elias will be looking for revenge against Lashley, but it will honestly be hard to top last week’s gag of calling Child Protective Services about Rush.

It’s the Survivor Series fallout show!

What will you be looking for on Raw tonight?