WrestleMania is now only two weeks away and as Jim Ross would say, business is about to pick up in a major way on Monday night as Raw rolled into the TD Garden in Boston.
With the main event of the Showcase of the Immortals now confirmed, the Raw Women's Title will headline the biggest show of the year for the first time ever.
The three participants take part in a special challenge and Kurt Angle's farewell tour continues against a storied rival from Smackdown Live.
Mirror Sport's John Isherwood takes a look at the five things you need to know from Monday's Raw.
WWE backstage figures trying to get Kurt Angle's Wrestlemania 35 match changed
Becky beats the clock
The history making WrestleMania headliners kicked off Raw with a beat the clock challenge against all three members of The Riott Squad.
Ronda’s new found attitude is doing wonders for her right now. Scowling, walking with attitude and taking no prisoners, Rousey is coming off as a legitimate fighter who just wants to brutalise her opponents and proved as much here by setting the pace in this beat the clock challenge at 1 minute 25 seconds tapping out Sarah Logan.
Charlotte failed to get Ruby Riott to tap to the Figure Eight, but it was The Man who managed to beat Ronda’s time as she rolled up Liv Morgan with seven seconds to spare.
Beat the clock matches in WWE usually come with some stipulation attached, this one however only came with the promise of ‘momentum’ going into the WrestleMania main event. Whatever that means.
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The Top Guys lose again
The Revival are one of the most unique tag teams to appear in the WWE in years and despite several injury setbacks the self-professed Top Guys are now top dogs on Raw holding the brands tag team titles.
For reasons unbeknown to many observers, The Revival just can’t get a win now they hold the gold. Once again facing off against Ricochet and Aleister Black, the old school inspired team fell to as combination of the Black Mass and a 630 from the human gif machine.
It feels like this is going to be a déjà vu moment over the coming weeks and will possibly end in a victory for the One and Only and The Dutch Destroyer at WrestleMania. Or is there another plan afoot?
The Revival can wrestle a classic with anyone and given the chance to run with their gimmick – maybe even bringing back the classic tag belts as they teased on social media – they could become one of the promotions top teams for years to come.
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The Big Dog v The Scottish Terminator
After laying down the challenge last week, Drew McIntryre was out for answers from the Big Dog, Roman Reigns.
McIntyre has so far defeated Roman’s Shield partners, Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose and was looking to make it a hat-trick on April 7 on the grandest stage of them all.
Reigns was in no mood to mess around. Striding to the ring with purpose, Reigns grabbed the mic and claimed “Roman accepts your challenge” before the pair got into a brawl.
Despite Reigns getting the early shots in, it was Drew who stood tall over Reigns by the end of the segment leaving The Big Dog laying ahead of their newly signed match on April 7.
Angle V Joe
Kurt Angle confirmed that he will head to Smackdown for one last time on Tuesday to face former IMPACT rival AJ Styles in a dream encounter on his farewell tour and on Raw that tour continued against another former IMPACT opponent in Samoa Joe.
To the chants of “You still got it” Joe and Angle rolled back the years and tore it up like in their TNA/IMPACT days with a classic performance. Despite it looking like Joe was set to put Angle away with the Coquina Clutch, Angle managed to break free and stun the US champ with the victory.
With Angle announcing that he was to face Baron Corbin at WrestleMania, the reaction from the fans has been somewhat underwhelming, now we are seeing two WrestleMania calibre matches on free television in the space of a week. Surely there is a twist still to come in this tale?
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Career on the line
One of the biggest matches announced for this year’s WrestleMania is the battle between former Evolution teammates, Triple H and Batista.
The returning Hollywood star has The Game in his sights and whereas The Animal wasn’t present on Monday, Triple H delivered one of the most intense promos of his career.
Pausing to praise Ronda, Becky and Charlotte for being the first women to headline WrestleMania, The Game turned his attention to Batista as he addressed their upcoming contest.
Pulling out a letter from Dave’s lawyers, Triple H said Batista would only compete if he agreed to another stipulation. After harking back to Batista’s debut run with D-Von Dudley and claiming that big Dave only left because he couldn’t beat John Cena , it was revealed that Batista wanted Triple H to put his career on the line in their match, or it was off.
The Game accepted the terms stating that if he couldn’t beat Batista, “what was the point in carrying on his career?”
