CHANGE MADE TO CODY RHODES WWE RAW PLANS REVEALED
A change that was made to plans for Cody Rhodes on last night’s May 8 episode of WWE Raw has been revealed.
As usual before the show, Fightful Select posted a rundown of the planned format, but this time, specifically said that talent had just been handed a new format, implying the one Fightful posted had been changed.
Looking at the format from Fightful and what happened on the show, one change stands out massively, which is the positioning of the World Heavyweight Championship tournament three-way matches.
On the initial rundown posted by Fightful, Cody Rhodes’ opening promo was set to be followed by his three-way with The Miz and Finn Balor, and the other one with Seth Rollins, Damian Priest and Shinsuke Nakamura was set to happen after Otis vs Mustafa Ali.
However, what happened on the show was that the two three-way were flipped around, so the Seth Rollins one was right after the Cody Rhodes opening promo, and Cody Rhodes’ three-way was after Otis vs Ali.
It’s unclear exactly why this changed, but it did allow for a confrontation between Seth Rollins and Cody Rhodes at the top of the stage when Seth Rollins came out for his match.
It also meant Cody Rhodes on TV at 9pm, which WWE usually makes a conscious effort to do so that top-of-the-hour channel flippers see him and hopefully stay around with him being the biggest star on Raw.
Seth Rollins won his three-way, while Cody Rhodes’ was won by Finn Balor after Cody Rhodes was attacked by Brock Lesnar, setting up a rematch from Backlash for Night of Champions.
Seth Rollins beat Finn Balor in the show’s main event so he’s into the final of the World Heavyweight Championship tournament at Night of Champions against whoever wins from the SmackDown side on Friday.
According to the format Fightful posted, Seth Rollins vs Finn Balor was always the planned main event, so nothing changed there.
Here’s a recap of what happened during Raw last night:
Seth ‘Freakin’ Rollins def. Damian Priest, Shinsuke Nakamura in the WWE World Heavyweight Championship tournament
Mustafa Ali def. Otis when Chad Gable and Maxxine Dupri argued and distracted Otis
Finn Balor def. Cody Rhodes, The Miz in the WWE World Heavyweight Championship tournament
Brock Lesnar, who had cost Cody Rhodes the aforementioned three-way, attacked Rhodes and demanded a rematch from Backlash at Night of Champions, which Rhodes later accepted
Rhea Ripley def. Dana Brooke was then confronted by Natalya
Kevin Owens & Sami Zayn def. Giovanni Vinci & Ludwig Kaiser
Johnny Gargano, Candice LeRae, Indi Hartwell and Dexter Lumis reunited The Way backstage, and Gargano hinted at someone else returning soon which could be Tommaso Ciampa
Zoey Stark def. Nikki Cross
Becky Lynch returned and confronted Trish Stratus
Dominik Mysterio def. Xavier Woods
Seth Rollins def. Finn Balor in the WWE World Heavyweight Championship tournament