WWE will have its weekly television schedule moved around for the next two weeks, as the 2022 Winter Olympics will bump the next two weeks worth of Monday Night Raw and NXT 2.0 off the USA Network and onto Syfy. In order to combat the network change, Andrew Zarian of The Mat Men Podcast is reporting next week’s episode will air with limited commercial breaks. There’s no word yet on if the Feb. 14 and 15 episodes will do the same, though those will be the Elimination Chamber go-home episode of Raw and the NXT Vengeance Day specials.
The only thing confirmed for next week’s Raw is a Quiz Bowl between RK-Bro and Alpha Academy. If Randy Orton and Riddle win, they get a Raw Tag Team Championship match. As for Elimination Chamber, two matches have been confirmed — a WWE Championship Elimination Chamber match between Bobby Lashley, Brock Lesnar, Seth Rollins, AJ Styles, Riddle and Austin Theory and a Raw Women’s Championship bout between Becky Lynch and Lita.
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As for Vengeance Day, NXT has confirmed Carmelo Hayes will defend the NXT North American Championship against Cameron Grims and Indi Hartwell and Persia Pirotta will try to dethrone Toxic Attraction for the NXT Women’s Tag Team Championships.
Riddle revealed while on My Love Letter to Wrestling this week that his partnership with Orton, which has become one of the highlights of Raw over the past few months, was originally going to end on its first night. He explained (h/t WrestlingNews.co), “Teaming with Randy Orton, it was supposed to be one time. He was supposed to turn on me on night one. Then Vince [McMahon], the crowd, and everybody liked it so much, they were like, ‘Are you guys willing to see if this works?’ I was like, ‘Yeah.’ We liked working with each other. We were friendly. Randy was gone for like three months and I just kept the team afloat, always talking about Randy. I was always talking about Randy and they were like, ‘He’ll be back soon.’ I had no idea when he was coming back.”
