There’s a new belt in town, and it’s very big and very gold.
Before Raw, WWE teased that Triple H would deliver a “huge announcement” on Monday’s show. He has already appeared on WWE programming twice since WrestleMania 39, but any time the head of creative surfaces, it’s meaningful. That was once again the case tonight.
With the WWE Draft starting Friday, April 28, Triple H announced that Roman Reigns would take the WWE Undisputed Championship to whichever brand selects him. The other brand, however, will have the brand new WWE World Heavyweight Championship, which The Game unveiled in the ring.
The first champion will be decided at Night of Champions in Saudi Arabia on May 27.
This looks similar to the previous World Heavyweight Championship in color and shape. The WWE logo slapped on the front is a stark difference, but hypothetically, when this belt goes to a championship-winning sports team, the distinctive branding stands out compared to no logo to make it distinguishable.
Creating a new belt means more championship matches. With Reigns’ near 1,000-day run featuring only a handful of title defenses, it has left a hole in the main event of premium live events. This championship aids that issue and gives fans additional matches of significance to anticipate.
It probably means Reigns won’t lose the WWE Undisputed Championship anytime soon, either, to extend this reign and push him to heights not seen in decades. Since that may not sit well with some fans, adding a new title is reasonable fan service.
There’s also the task of not making the World Heavyweight Championship a compensatory prize. One title can’t feel grander than the other once it’s established, or it could fall secondary as the old Big Gold Belt did. That’s a long-term task, but one that can have a prominent short-term gain at Night of Champions in its presentation and how WWE works to make the first titleholder feel important.
Showing up at the other company’s show is one way to get people talking before your expected comeback, for sure.
Pro wrestling is always full of surprises, but this will turn everyone’s head.
According to PW Insider, CM Punk was backstage for a time before Monday’s episode of WWE Raw. The show is at the Allstate Center just outside Chicago, his hometown.
The report doesn’t indicate why Punk visited, but he briefly saw Paul “Triple H” Levesque, which would make it the first time they interacted in person since Punk’s WWE departure.
According to Fightful Select (subscription required but recommended), Punk spoke with The Miz among other WWE talents. WWE’s head of security, Jim Kelly eventually asked him to exit the arena, with PW Insider’s report mentioning it was Vince McMahon’s call for the wrestling star to leave.
Fightful Select also reported that several AEW talents were “in disbelief” that Punk was backstage at Raw. Other WWE talent also felt it was a publicity stunt for his AEW return.
Punk has been heavily linked to an AEW return for its long-awaited Saturday show that’s potentially being built around him. So AEW talents being distraught about this, when there have been numerous issues between Punk and the company’s wrestlers already, lines up.
If it was a publicity stunt, it worked. Punk’s name makes headlines with a wrestling company he’s not returning to, weeks before his likely AEW return. It makes fans and the industry talk, and it could put more eyes on his comeback later this year.
From the walkout to his fight with The Elite in 2022, the social media barbs with AEW talent only weeks ago, and his surprisingly likely AEW return alone, controversy has followed Punk this past year. If a full-time run in AEW is in the cards, chances are more unpredictable events will occur. In that case, it’s anyone’s guess what Punk will do next or where he’ll be.
Cuts are going to happen when WWE merges with UFC, but it’s not the wrestlers who will feel the effects.
When the merger of WWE and UFC to create a new, publicly traded company is finalized later this year, parent company Endeavor is likely to lay people off as a cost-cutting measure — just not in-ring performers.
That was the message delivered by current WWE CEO Nick Khan, who will stay on as WWE president in the new entity, in his recent conversation with Lightshed Partners (registration required). Khan said that the goal would be to save at least $50 million in costs, something that would require the integration teams to be “pretty aggressive” when addressing how the new company would look (h/t TJR Wrestling for the transcription).
If you look at what Endeavor was able to take out, cost-wise, from UFC in 2016 or shortly after that deal was done, we have the same expectation here. We think 50 (million) is a really conservative number. We have integration teams now, we’re going to get those in shape, I think we’ll have a better sense of it in a month or two.
We’re going to be pretty aggressive with them to make sure that, for our shareholders and for our company, our organisation is as lean and mean as possible, and we’re going to rely on the Endeavor flywheel to make up the rest.
The probability of extensive behind-the-scenes layoffs was raised by Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer earlier this week when he stopped by our Under the Ring podcast. But Meltzer also predicted there would be little noticeable effect on weekly WWE programming, and that’s something Khan also addressed.
Notably, he suggested that there wouldn’t be roster cuts as the merger went forward — or at least none mandated by Endeavor, leaving any personnel decisions about the actual wrestlers up to Paul “Triple H” Levesque and Kevin Dunn.
The most important thing is to leave the product untouched. Untouched, meaning, if Triple H and Kevin Dunn want to evolve it, great, but in terms of cutbacks there, that’s not what we’re looking to do.
No name has been announced yet for the combined WWE-UFC company, though it will likely trade under the stock ticker symbol ‘TKO.’ Barring any unforeseen developments, the merger is expected to be formally completed later this year.
Having every WWE Superstar available for selection would help make things that much more interesting.
The consensus on the Raw After WrestleMania was that it was pretty dull this year. Maybe the return of the WWE Draft can rev up the excitement level a little bit.
Though reports from several outlets suggested there had been little firm discussion about a draft this year, that changed this week on SmackDown. Appearing to discuss the future of WWE, Triple H promised that this year’s version would “truly change the game.”
As revealed on the April 14 episode of SmackDown, the 2023 WWE Draft will start on Friday, April 28 on that week’s episode of SmackDown. It will then continue on Monday, May 1 on Raw.
This is in line with several of the most recent versions of the WWE Draft, which were spread out over one episode each of both shows.
What will the rules be for the 2023 WWE Draft?
On SmackDown, Triple H vowed that this year’s draft would be bigger than ever, because “every single Superstar” would be eligible. That leaves a lot of room for interpretation, particularly when it comes to NXT wrestlers. Previous drafts have been used regularly to elevate a few NXT talents to the main roster.
But it does sound like every regularly appearing WWE wrestler will be available, which hasn’t always been the case. There are almost always exceptions carved out or performers who are essentially safe from switching brands.
Doing away with those outliers would make the WWE Draft more exciting and unpredictable, so hopefully Triple H is being literal. We’ll update this post with more details when they are revealed by WWE.
McMahon’s return is a middle finger to WWE employees and talent.
The Monday Night Raw after Wrestlemania is reliably one of the most-viewed Raws of the year. It’s an opportunity to unpack the results from the biggest live event on the calendar and begin new storylines, often with debuting talent eager to shine in front of a raucous audience.
Paul “Triple H” Levesque, the superstar-turned-executive, jumped on this opportunity. He opened the show in the center of the ring, launching into a long promo about how things weren’t going to change now that the company had been bought by Endeavor. He promised the storylines and development he’d ushered in over the nine months since longtime CEO Vince McMahon retired would remain in place, carrying the banner of one of the WWE’s most popular stretches in recent history.
Behind the scenes, it was a very different story. McMahon wasn’t just back, his fingerprints were all over the three-hour show — and it soon became apparent in the ring.
Long promos and limited action were once again commonplace. One hundred eighty minutes of broadcast time gave way to five actual wrestling matches. Brock Lesnar came out, teamed with Cody Rhodes and betrayed him all in roughly a two-and-a-half-hour span, effectively recreating John Cena’s post-Wrestlemania arc from 11 years earlier.
This was all very familiar, because it was all Vince McMahon’s plan.
McMahon’s fingerprints were all over Raw, from his “in case of emergency, deploy Brock” ethos to the scattered, hastily rewritten nature of the show itself. Many character motivations, after months-long chases, were abandoned or ignored. Everything felt like it had been thrown together on the fly, because it was.
This show is categorically different than how it was laid out even a few hours ago. At least two matches scrapped or changed
— Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful.com (@SeanRossSapp) April 4, 2023
This is a big deal. WWE had spent the last nine months rebuilding goodwill following McMahon’s departure — a retirement that came on the heels of disclosing a years-long pattern of sexual misconduct in the workplace and more than $17 million in costs related to covering up, then investigating, said conduct. Levesque’s role as the head of creative (i.e. the guy who approves all the matches, promos, etc.) wasn’t just stepping into a void. It brought new energy and compelling storytelling to a company whose production had been uneven in recent years.
McMahon’s return threatens to undo all that. It also sends a distinct message about how the new ownership views his past behavior: it sees McMahon as an asset despite all his liabilities. We know Endeavor doesn’t care about the behavior of the rich guys who lead its combat sport cash cows. Just earlier this year, it turned a blind eye to Dana White striking his wife.
McMahon told CNBC Monday that he’d “owned up” to his mistakes and moved on, even if that meant no real consequences after a pattern of sexual misconduct with subordinates. Those “mistakes” eventually led him to sell his business for more than $9 billion and then regain control over the company just as he had before retirement. There’s a lesson here, and it’s not a tale of accountability.
This doesn’t just impact corporate workers. Rising talent and mid-card staples were given the opportunity to flourish over the previous nine months. But with just one night back at the stick and a handful of rewrites, McMahon reportedly undid that progress and listed back toward his preference of established stars and a trusted, if stale, formula.
Vince McMahon was changing lots of things and in Gorilla at Raw. It caused a big hit to WWE morale.
— Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful.com (@SeanRossSapp) April 4, 2023
Per Fightful’s Sean Ross Sapp, some wrestlers backstage were “very frustrated” at the prospect of going backward and erasing all the momentum the previous eight months had built. WWE took steps to separate itself from a rising tide of wrestling, standing tall above rivals like AEW, New Japan Pro Wrestling and Impact. McMahon’s return threatens to sink Raw, Smackdown and the rest of the company’s programming back into the same loop it had been stuck in throughout the bulk of the last decade.
It’s still entirely too early to figure out what the end result will be. Levesque remains in charge of the creative side of things, though McMahon reportedly has final say over what makes it to broadcast. WWE has momentum after a strong Wrestlemania 39 — albeit one that started better than it finished.
But Endeavor’s purchase and McMahon’s return suggests years of predatory behavior can be hand-waved away, effectively telling women employees they’re taking a man, who has made his living talking and hyping up the thoroughly unbelievable, at his word. Or that his behavior simply does not matter. Indiscretions past or future have no consequence other than money, something McMahon now has more than ever of after selling the company he grew into pro wrestling shorthand for billions of dollars.
This hard reset is a signal anything in the WWE can be undone, including whatever workplace misconduct might arise. It also covers nine months of progress and fresh storylines if the first Raw after Wrestlemania is any indication. Morale is reportedly low among WWE employees after McMahon’s return to the helm. It’s easy to understand why.
What surprises are in store after WrestleMania 39? Get live Raw After WrestleMania results here.
If there’s ever an episode of its flagship show that WWE wants to play close to the vest, the Raw After WrestleMania is it. On the heels of an eventful and emotional two-night WrestleMania at SoFi Stadium, the scene shifts to Crypto.com Arena for tonight’s show.
And it promises to be more packed than usual, because WWE announced that the first hour will be commercial-free. Will we see NXT promotions? Stars returning after long absences? A certain Catalyst, perhaps? We’ll have to wait and see.
WWE has literally said nothing else about what to expect, so let’s do some speculation. First and foremost, there’s the matter of Cody Rhodes. The American Nightmare went into WrestleMania confident and with the vast majority of the WWE Universe behind him to achieve his destiny … and lost.
Since it took the entire Bloodline to defeat him, maybe Rhodes isn’t completely crestfallen. But he’ll have to pick himself up and try to move forward, and that likely starts tonight.
Bianca Belair had a more successful outing on Sunday night, turning away a tough challenge from Asuka to remain the Raw Women’s Champion. We could learn what’s next for The EST of WWE in L.A. as well.
Plus we know Bad Bunny will be on hand tonight. The music superstar played a small but pivotal role on night 1 of WrestleMania, preventing Dominik Mysterio from using a chain on his father. Bad Bunny will be the host of Backlash, the next WWE premium live event, but perhaps there’s even more in store for him on Raw.
There’s bound to be much more, but just like you, we’re going to have to watch to see exactly what it is. That means tuning to USA at 8 p.m. ET (and getting all your bathroom breaks in ahead of time, thanks to the no commercials) or keeping it locked here at Wrestling Junkie for us to hit you with live Raw After WrestleMania results all evening.
WWE Raw After WrestleMania results in 90 seconds:
Triple H takes a WrestleMania 39 victory lap and assures everyone that the sale to Endeavor changes nothing
He then brings out Roman Reigns, quickly joined by Cody Rhodes; Cody wants a rematch, but instead ends up with a tag team match — with Brock Lesnar as his partner
The Usos stop by to see Reigns, but Heyman says he’s stepped out and that Jimmy and Jey can hit the jet for seafood; Paul can be heard saying “I took care of it” as he returns to the locker room
A video package shows highlights from the WWE Hall of Fame ceremony Friday night
Bad Bunny promotes Backlash in Puerto Rico and says he’s happy to be enjoying tonight’s show as a fan … hmm …
Rey Mysterio wants to take time to thank the WWE Universe, but he’s interrupted by Austin Theory, who’s feeling good about his victory over John Cena and wants a piece of another legend
Austin Theory def. Rey Mysterio by pinfall after interference by Dominik Mysterio, who teams with Damian Priest to attack Rey and send Bad Bunny through the announce table after the match
Adam Pearce is going after Priest, who asks why AP didn’t have the same energy when Bad Bunny interfered at Mania
The new champs are here, and while Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens deserve the love they’re getting, the Street Profits still want to fight them
Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens def. Street Profits by pinfall
Seth Rollins brags about sending Logan Paul and KSI back to the cesspool of social media, and he’s ready to hear the people sing his song … so he does, and then leaves
Bobby Lashley says he has a lot of pent-up frustration, and the taunting he’s getting from Bronson Reed isn’t going to help; this probably isn’t the best time for Mustafa Ali to put his two cents in …
Bobby Lashley def. Mustafa Ali by submission
Reigns asks Heyman if he knew Lesnar would be here, and is not happy that it happened, but he’s determined to prevail tonight
What’s next for Bianca Belair? Not Rhea Ripley, not yet, though the two champs tease a match to see who’s the best of the best somewhere down the line
Liv Morgan and Raquel Rodriguez def. Damage CTRL (Dakota Kai and IYO SKY) by pinfall to earn a WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship match
The Miz opens his mouth unwisely again, gets beaten up by a returning Matt Riddle
Becky Lynch, Lita and Trish Stratus are still riding the high from their WrestleMania victory and are glad to have Damage CTRL behind them … but is there something off with Trish?
There is no main event, just an ass kicking, as Lesnar assaults Rhodes right after the teams are announced
Please scroll down for more details on every match and major non-match segment.
38 WrestleManias. 41 main events. Here’s how they rank, from Yokozuna and Sycho Sid to stone cold classics.
The biggest event in professional wrestling — sorry, sports entertainment — is nearly upon us. It’s WrestleMania week.
The landmark marvel of storytelling, violence and athleticism is the standard bearer of the squared circle. Everyone knows about WrestleMania, even if they don’t care about pro wrestling. And as such, the pressure is on the WWE each spring to create a memorable event that can sustain the brand’s success for the year to come.
Sometimes this works out better than others. This showcase has been the backdrop of several indelible moments woven into the fabric of wrestling. It has also served to prop up uncompelling storylines and stars who shined in longtime company head Vince McMahon’s eyes but not in the hearts of fans in the stands.
Let’s talk about those headliners and whether or not they lived up to the pressure of closing out WrestleMania. There have been 41 headlining matches across 38 WrestleManias to date — including the six from the last three years, where the WWE wisely opted to spread the card over two nights. This is my crude attempt to rank all 41 from worst to best, hopefully overcoming my own recency bias in the process.
Additionally, please excuse the somewhat bizarre choice of section images. It turns out USA Today Sports doesn’t have an extensive archive of pre-2020s wrestling photos.
Star wrestler Triple H offers to pay the fine for Philadelphia 76ers big man Joel Embiid from the NBA.
The Philadelphia 76ers picked up an impressive win over the Brooklyn Nets on Wednesday at home in an emotionally-charged game featuring Joel Embiid vs. Ben Simmons. It was the first matchup between the two stars since the 2022 deadline deal.
Toward the end of the win, Embiid had a big and-1 on a circus shot, and he pulled out the DX chop celebration. Afterward, he responded to Nets star Kevin Durant’s trolling of the celebration when Durant called it trash.
The NBA was not amused by Embiid’s celebration either and fined him $25,000.
Wrestling star Triple-H, a member of DX, took to Twitter and offered to pay the fine for the big fella.
Embiid has been terrific in the 2022-23 season. He is averaging 33.8 points and 10 rebounds, and he’s shooting 53.4% from the floor. There isn’t much he can’t do on the basketball court, and the Sixers are looking to get to the mountaintop in the NBA with him leading the way.
Don’t expect to see blood in WWE matches unless it’s of the unintentional variety.
Pro wrestling, as opposed to sports entertainment, is very much back in vogue in WWE since Paul “Triple H” Levesque took over as head of creative following the departure of Vince McMahon. But that doesn’t mean everything that takes place in the ring is changing, and that includes wrestlers bleeding during matches.
Wrestlers bleeding to sell the damage from particularly violent or personal feuds is a tradition almost as old as the art form itself, but it’s one that WWE has steered away from in recent years. And even for matches as brutal as WarGames, which the company announced will be a major part of Survivor Series in November, that’s not going to stop.
Speaking to The Ringer, Levesque made it clear that intentional blood in pro wrestling is a relic of the past.
“The world has changed, he said. “The world has evolved. I don’t think it’s necessary.
“I’m just of the opinion right now, given the state of the world and the pandemic, and at the end of the day, what we do is dangerous enough without intentionally making it more dangerous. Yes, we did [feature bleeding] for a long period of time, but we’ve changed that practice. And it’s irresponsible to go back.”
That last line could be interpreted as a bit of a shot at AEW, which does still offer up blood during matches on a regular basis. It’s not uncommon to see the likes of Jon Moxley either bleeding on weekly TV or helping his opponents do the same. Cody Rhodes, currently out injured in WWE, was known for it as well, and images immediately come to mind of blood staining his blond hair red.
Apparently he won’t be carrying on that tradition in WWE going forward, but the guess here is that few if any fans watch wrestling specifically to see people bleed. By setting a clear viewpoint on blood and why WWE wants to stay away from it, Levesque is managing expectations for things like WarGames, and that seems like a very good idea indeed.
WWE has “upped the ante” of Survivor Series this year with two WarGames matches.
Survivor Series used to be one of the biggest WWE events in any calendar year, one where big things would go down. It’s lost some of its luster over the past 10-15 years, but the company and its current Paul Levesque-led creative team may have found a way to claw some of it back.
As first reported by The Ringer, this year’s Survivor Series, which will take place at Boston’s TD Garden, will feature not one, but two WarGames matches.
“We’ll have a men’s WarGames match and a women’s WarGames match,” Levesque said to The Ringer. “The tradition of the Survivor Series has ebbed and flowed and changed slightly over time, but this will be similar to that.”
It also won’t be brand-driven, which is sure to please many fans who have called for the brand split to end.
“This will not be Raw versus SmackDown,” Levesque said. “It will be much more story-line driven.”
The WarGames match features two competing teams doing battle within two rings set inside an oversized steel cage. While the exact details haven’t always been the same over the years, the general idea is that the match begins with one wrestler from each team going at it, with a new combatant entering from alternating teams every few minutes.
Only once all members of both teams have entered can the match be won. There are no disqualifications, meaning weapons can and definitely do come into play. In the most recent incarnations of WarGames, in WWE’s NXT brand, every member of one team needed to be pinned or submitted to win, unless someone escaped the cage, which meant their team automatically lost.
The WarGames concept dates back to NWA in the late 1980s, and to date there have been more than three dozen of the matches. However, the vast majority of them took place before 2000, and all nine since 2017 have been held during NXT events, with the most recent occurring last December.
That will make the Survivor Series WarGames matches the first ever for the main WWE roster, and potentially the first time some fans who didn’t watch NXT are ever seeing them. They also really do fit the spirit of Survivor Series, which has traditionally had elimination-style matches between teams as part of its DNA.
Only now, as Levesque puts it, “We just upped the ante a little bit.” Most WWE fans would agree that Survivor Series could use that.
