Tonight begins a new year for the WWE as it is the first Raw after WrestleMania with the show taking place from the Amway Center in Orlando.
Sunday night’s WrestleMania provided so many memorable moments for the Raw side.
Roman Reigns defeated The Undertaker in the main event of the show and likely sent him into retirement. Brock Lesnar finally defeated Goldberg to become the Universal champion, the Hardy Boyz returned to capture the tag team titles, Bayley retained the Women’s Championship and Kevin Owens beat Chris Jericho to win the United States Championship.
The Raw after WrestleMania is always the most unique Raw of the year and this year shouldn’t be any different.
There are a lot of questions heading into this evening’s Raw. Here are the four burning questions going into the first show after WrestleMania:
- What’s next for Roman Reigns? Whether anyone likes it or not, Reigns defeated The Undertaker to close WrestleMania. It is interesting to see what WWE will do with “The Big Dog”. A program against Lesnar would seem to be the way to go but if you want to build to such a match, putting it on a “B” pay-per-view makes little sense. That is a match to be saved for one of the big four events of the year. Finishing off his program with Braun Strowman could be a way to go but after the big man didn’t win the Andre Giant Memorial Battle Royal that would appear to be an unlikely route.
- Who will make surprise appearances? Year after year, this is the show where we see old stars return and new talent debuts from either another organization or NXT. Finn Balor is expected to return as he’s been wrestling on the house shows for the last couple weeks. Shinsuke Nakamura apparently is done on NXT and the big stars usually go to Raw. Tye Dillinger seems to be in the verge of coming in as well.
- Whose the first challenger for Brock Lesnar? Since Lesnar is done feuding with Goldberg, it is interesting to see where WWE goes with the new Universal champion. If Balor returns this evening, you could go that route since Balor never lost the Universal title in a match. Like we stated earlier, Reigns could be an option but Roman vs Brock is a program that should be built slowly if the plan is to get Reigns to be “the guy”. Options are very limited and that is on WWE as their lack of building stars hurts them in situations like this. You should have guys ready for Lesnar, and instead, beyond Reigns, WWE has no one built up strong enough to go toe to toe with the new champion.
- Will we get a new general manager? If there’s going to a new person to run the ship, this show is the one to do it now. The newest member of the WWE Hall of Fame, Kurt Angle, is the favorite to be the choice. The mix of the heel and babyface tandem of Stephanie McMahon and Mick Foley was a great dynamic. Angle and McMahon had great chemistry in the past and the fact they haven’t worked together in over 11 years would be provide great television for fans who have never seen the 1996 Olympic gold medalist or haven’t seen much of his work since he left WWE in 2006.
