WWE Raw preview (Nov. 1, 2021): This needs to be it for Bianca Belair

Raw airs tonight (Nov. 1) with a live show from the Dunkin Donuts Center in Providence, Rhode Island. This is the second Raw episode during the four week build towards Survivor Series 2021 on November 21.

This needs to be it for Bianca Belair

Bianca Belair will challenge Becky Lynch for the Raw women’s championship tonight, unless plans change.

This will be Bianca’s fourth title match since she dropped the SmackDown women’s title to Lynch a little over two months ago at SummerSlam. It’s a bit strange to have a babyface fail to win the gold that often in such a short time span, and I don’t like Bianca’s chances tonight either. If the plan was for Belair to win the Raw women’s title, then she should have beaten Charlotte Flair for the gold two weeks ago when they fought each other in the Raw main event. Similarly, if the plan was for Becky Lynch to not be champion right now, she should have dropped the SmackDown women’s championship to Sasha Banks at Crown Jewel. Neither of those things happened, and that makes Lynch the favorite to walk out of tonight’s episode as the champ.

If this match ends with Becky retaining, that means Bianca will have challenged for championship gold at Extreme Rules, Crown Jewel, and two recent episodes of Raw, with nothing to show for it. WWE risks doing damage to Belair if this pattern continues, so she either has to win the title tonight, or this needs to be her last title match for a while.

The rest of the title scene

Seth Rollins won a ladder match last week to earn a future shot at Big E’s WWE championship. Considering how often the WWE champion loses the title on television right before Survivor Series in recent years, Big E might want to get that match booked onto the Survivor Series card itself. Hopefully tonight’s episode of Raw will give us more details on when this match is happening. And get ready to hear Seth’s evil cackling, because he will no doubt brag about his big win from last week.

WWE’s “New Era” of Raw was supposed to begin last week with AJ Styles and Omos challenging RK-Bro for the Raw tag team titles, but the match didn’t happen. Instead, Orton and Matt Riddle successfully retained the titles against the Dirty Dawgs. It seemed pretty clear from watching the show that AJ Styles was not in the building, so that’s why the original match was called off. Is there more to the story here?

United States champion Damian Priest went a few weeks in October doing nothing on Raw while waiting for new rosters to go into effect, and now he suddenly has a new gimmick. T-BAR found out about this the hard way when he tossed a chair at Priest during their match. Damian snapped and had this scary look in his eyes as he unleashed violence all over T-BAR. I guess regular happy babyface Damian Priest wasn’t interesting enough to Vince McMahon, so now we get this version who goes somewhat Incredible Hulk on your ass when you piss him off.

Reggie has held onto the 24/7 championship for quite a long time, and none of the jobbers chasing him around for the title have ever figured out a better plan for subduing him. How much longer will WWE keep repeating the same segments and angles here with Reggie?

Rhea Ripley and Nikki A.S.H. are the Women’s tag team champions, but WWE doesn’t have any teams for them to face on Raw or SmackDown. It doesn’t appear that WWE is any rush to deal with this problem. As a result, the last time they wrestled on television was Oct. 4, nearly one month ago. Given the tag division is dead, can we at least get some singles matches featuring one or both of these women? Or is it contractually obligated that Carmella must wrestle Liv Morgan every single week?

Other stuff to keep an eye on

- The All Mighty former WWE champion Bobby Lashley was nowhere to be seen on last week’s episode. Can someone check on him to make sure that Bill Goldberg didn’t privately follow through on his obsession with murdering Bob?

- Keith ‘Bearcat’ Lee easily defeated Cedric Alexander last week, and it was teased that Shelton Benjamin might be next. It’s very early, but right now it looks like a lot of the old Keith Lee has been stripped away for whatever this Bearcat gimmick is going to be.

- Karrion Kross didn’t appear on Raw last week. He once vowed that he’s not on Raw just to get lost in the shuffle, so he better do something tonight in order to avoid that fate.

- Queen Zelina Vega defeated Doudrop last week on Raw thanks to an illegal assist with her royal scepter. Will a different woman on the Raw roster suffer that same fate tonight?

- Dominik Mysterio lost against Austin Theory last week. Rey wasn’t ringside for the match, so I wonder what twisted logic Dom will come up with to blame this one on his old man.

- Kevin Owens told Finn Balor that last week’s main event ladder match was a must-win for him. KO didn’t win, so I’m a little concerned over how he will react tonight. As for Balor, losing the big match is what he usually does on the WWE main roster. He should also have a chip on his shoulder tonight given his recent failures in pursuing the Universal championship, the King of the Ring, and now the WWE championship.

- Survivor Series isn’t too far off. WWE should probably start making some matches official for the card.

What will you be looking for on Raw tonight?