The Judgment Day likes to go around saying it runs Monday nights. The villainous stable doesn’t necessarily need titles to back up that claim, but it sure does help, which is why the tag team title match tonight on WWE Raw in Washington D.C. is important to its efforts to keep the rest of the roster under its collective thumb.
Rhea Ripley has so far been the only member of the group to keep a firm grip on a championship. Damian Priest and Finn Balor have win the tag team titles twice, but that means they’ve also lost them once.
As luck would have it (well, more Adam Pearce than luck, but you get it), the men they beat for the championship the second time are also the ones who briefly took it from them, Cody Rhodes and Jey Uso. So if Priest and Balor can hang on to the belts tonight, they’ll pull off the rare retention/payback combo in one fell swoop.
It’s also very much worth noting that Survivor Series is coming up fast, and both of these duos are on opposite sides of WarGames at that event. Could that figure into what happens on Raw? Honestly, it might be more surprising if it didn’t.
There’s some other good stuff advertised for this show as well, especially when it comes to in-ring action. Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Otis sounds like a matchup we didn’t know we wanted. The same could be said for Tommaso Ciampa vs. Ludwig Kaiser, and there are several women’s intriguing women’s matches scheduled too.
So what say you? If you’re ready to take it all in, so are we.
WWE Raw results from Washington D.C.:
(please scroll down for full details on any match or segment in bold)
- Cody Rhodes and his WarGames team exchange pleasantries with The Judgment Day, which ends with Damian Priest declaring himself his group’s leader and accepting Seth Rollins’ challenge for a tag team match involving the four men NOT in tonight’s main event
- Sami Zayn and Seth Rollins def. Dominik Mysterio and JD McDonagh by DQ, as the rest of The Judgment Day interfere, Jey Uso and Cody Rhodes get involved, and Adam Pearce responds to the ensuing brawl by declaring everyone who is in the WarGames match barred from the arena for tonight’s main event
- Rhea Ripley yells at Pearce until both of them are joined in the ring by Zoey Stark, who says Rhea is simply worried about too many things; Ripley disagrees but also finds herself unable to pull off a sneak attack on her No. 1 contender
- Shinsuke Nakamura says he’s still in control and waiting for his time to go after the person he’s targeting, though he still won’t reveal who that is
- Cody asks to speak to Seth one on one, and Rollins promises that for one night, for WarGames, they will be good
- Shinsuke Nakamura def. Otis by pinfall
- A video package gets us even more hype for WarGames, if that’s possible
- Drew McIntyre stops Rollins to say that the things he told McIntyre before Crown Jewel turned out to be right, and extends his hand, which Seth shakes; the Scottish Warrior says he’s going to work his butt off to earn another shot, then watches Rollins walk off
- A video promotes Tegan Nox, her recovery from injury and the “craziest” year she’s had since then, where she learned she can hang with the very best in WWE
- Tegan Nox def. Piper Niven by pinfall
- Asked what is driving him to dethrone Gunther, The Miz says it’s his desire to restore the respect to his previous Intercontinental Championship reigns; both Ivar and Bronson Reed interrupt, and Reed ends up in a staredown with Valhalla
- Tommaso Ciampa vs. Ludwig Kaiser
- The Judgment Day regroups, agreeing that Priest can be the leader for WarGames, while Damian also says he’ll tell JD McDonagh he’s become a full member of the group
- Xia Li def. Indi Hartwell by referee stoppage, continuing a string of her stopping opponents with strikes alone; afterward, Becky Lynch arrives with a bone to pick, and though Li retreats, The Man says they’ve got a match confirmed for next week
- Gunther taunts The Miz backstage, but the A-Lister tells the Ring General to watch his match tonight and to beware at Survivor Series; the IC champ is unmoved, promising the “beating of a lifetime” for Miz at the PPV
- Stark gets Shayna Baszler to admit that she hopes Zoey defeats Rhea at Survivor Series, but both Raquel Rodriguez and Nia Jax both show up to tease a fight between the two of them
- The Miz def. Ivar by pinfall, and Ivar gets attacked by Reed after the bell
- Priest tells McDonagh he’s officially in The Judgment Day before Balor congratulates him and tells him to leave the arena (since he’s been barred from the building and all)
- Gunther is happy … but with Giovanni Vinci, not Kaiser; an angry Kaiser almost runs afoul of Indus Sher but thinks better of it
- The Creed Brothers, Alpha Academy and The New Day bicker over who should go for the tag team titles, Ivy Nile and Maxxine Dupri hit it off, and Akira Tozawa breaks out his nasty moves again
- The Judgment Day (Damian Priest and Finn Balor) def. Cody Rhodes and Jey Uso by pinfall to retain the Undisputed WWE Tag Team Championship after McIntyre lays out Uso with a Claymore
- The show ends with McIntyre shaking hands with Ripley on the stage as the fans boo