Raquel & her new partner, Money in the Bank qualifiers booked for next Raw

WWE revealed one mystery partner before Raw even started last night (May 22), announcing that Matt Riddle would re-team with his Backlash partners Kevin Owens & Sami Zayn to take on Imperium.

Their other mystery partner angle played out more organically. Sure, if you read the spoilers for this week’s SmackDown (taped last week since the roster will be in Saudi Arabia this Friday) you knew Shotzi would fill-in for the injured Liv Morgan as Raquel Rodriguez’s new tag partner. But at least we got some background for their alliance when the Ballsy Badass saved Rodriguez from a beatdown by heels Chelsea Green & Sonya Deville...

They also got a brief interview to confirm they’re a tag team, and more of one on Raw Talk. Both of those were pretty standard talk of mutual respect, and some talk about how their rivals in next Monday’s 4way for the vacant WWE Women’s Tag titles have some (checks notes) hard soup coming their way...

The best explanation is this one from Raquel’s Twitter, which used their history as NXT opponents as the basis for their mutual respect.

Joining that Tag title match on the May 29 Raw will be the start of Money in the Bank qualifying matches. Not much in the way of details for these yet, but since Night of Champions will be in the rearview by next Monday, seems like a good time to start the build to the next premium live event on July 1 in London.

Let us know what you think of Raquel & Shotzi’s chances against Deville & Green, Ronda Rousey & Shayna Baszler, and Damage CTRL’s Bayley & IYO SKY, and who you’re hoping to see in MitB qualifiers, in the comments below.