Tonight’s Monday Night Raw only has one match confirmed, but it’s a doozy. The long-awaited third installment in the Becky Lynch vs. Trish Stratus feud will take place after being announced by Adam Pearce two weeks ago with Stratus’ protege Zoey Stark banned from ringside. The match was reportedly planned to happen back at SummerSlam, but WWE officials pushed it off the card to avoid the pay-per-view from running too long. Paul “Triple H” Levesque then pushed back against the report in the post-show press conference.ย
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“There was a lot of banter I saw this week about matches being cut, which is the word that was used. But nothing was cut. There was no card announced. If we don’t have more things in the pocket ready to go for a PLE than can fit in the PLE, I’ve done a terrible job,” Levesque said. “Because there’s always an injury waiting around the corner. There’s always a moment that changes everything. And when one creative thing changes, it changes the trajectory of everything. So if you don’t have more stuff than you need ready to go, you’ve failed. Then you get to the unfortunate place where, ‘I’ve got too much stuff.’ I don’t know about any of you, that show as plenty long tonight. If it would’ve been longer, it would’ve been bad.ย
“So there comes a time when you say, ‘Well does everything get shorter time? Does everything get rushed? Or do we move things around and shift it and give it a bigger spotlight?’ As a performer, for me, I’d rather have the bigger spotlight,” he added.
The only other thing confirmed for the show is Shinsuke Nakamura explaining his actions for attacking Seth Rollins at the end of last week’s episode. Stay tuned for full coverage of the episode.
WWE Raw Card (Aug. 14, 2023):
- Becky Lynch vs. Trish Stratus
- Shinsuke Nakamura explains why he attacked Seth Rollins
- TBA
Cody Rhodes Still Wants a Rematch With Roman Reigns
One question that went unanswered during last week’s episode is what’s next for Cody Rhodes as “The American Nightmare” got distracted by The Judgement Day before Rollins had the chance to call him out. He made it clear during the SummerSlam post-show press conference that he still wants another crack at Roman Reigns in order to “finish the story.”
“I think everybody in the room probably knows what my plans are,” Rhodes said, refraining from saying Reigns’ name outright. “We were talking about finishing the story. Now, the thing that I’ve been saying to myself, saying out loud, saying while laying there on the mat is ‘get back.’ I want to get back to the situation that I was in, to the same scenario I was in, and fix that outcome. I’m not going to say specifically what that is, but I think we can all read between the lines, and the journey to get there is dang near next to impossible, it really is, including three (matches) with Brock Lesnar. That would be what I would hope, but consistently surprised, you never know. I don’t mean that as a tagline. With me, on Monday nights, you never know. It’s been a great surprise so far.”
