Part of the Raw roster for May 8 and beyond is set. The rest of it will fall into place on tonight’s episode from Forth Worth, Texas.
Thanks to Night One of the 2023 WWE Draft, Raw has 24 wrestlers on its roster, including Cody Rhodes, Becky Lynch and all of Imperium. But the other half of the WWE talent pool remains ready to be selected on Night Two, which just so happens to be tonight.
One of the big names yet to be chosen is Brock Lesnar. Not only is he generally not involved in the draft, getting to be a free agent who floats between brands, he’s also in the middle of a program with Rhodes. You’d think WWE would send them to the same brand, but it’s certainly not guaranteed since Lesnar and Rhodes will do battle at Backlash and the new rosters take effect on the following Raw.
(Note: Lesnar ended up as a free agent after all, see below.)
Two people who already know they’re going to be on Monday nights going forward are Shinsuke Nakamura and The Miz. Conveniently, we’ll see them interact tonight, as the King of Strong Style will be a guest on the A-Lister’s latest Miz TV segment.
There’s also an intriguing singles match that WWE announced this afternoon. Jimmy Uso still doesn’t know where he and Jey will be plying their trade, as The Usos are in tonight’s draft pool. But while the brothers are undoubtedly still stinging from their championship rematch loss to Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn — not to mention their failure in a bout they dedicated to the Tribal Chief — Jimmy won’t have time to reflect tonight as he’s up against Matt Riddle.
WWE Raw results from Fort Worth:
(click here for WWE Draft picks for each round tonight and click on any match with a link for more details)
- Triple H comes out to welcome everyone to Raw and to Night Two of the WWE Draft; oh, and Brock Lesnar isn’t eligible to be drafted after all, having renegotiated his status as a free agent earlier today
- “If he’s upset with me now, he’s really not going to like this one.” Paul Heyman says The Usos’ draft fate is TBD, but while addressing the “jokes” in the Raw locker room, he says the word “freakin'” a few too many times and accidentally summons Seth Rollins, who issues his own spoiler about winning the World Heavyweight Championship at Night of Champions; that brings out Solo Sikoa, who will face Rollins later tonight
- Adam Pearce asks Cody Rhodes not to start up any chaos with Brock Lesnar but gets no promises
- Bayley and Dakota Kai def. Liv Morgan and Raquel Rodriguez by pinfall
- Booker T (Raw) and wife Sharmell (SmackDown) head out to deliver the next round of draft picks
- “Good luck with that.” Pearce makes the same plea to Brock Lesnar that he made to Cody, but well …
- Braun Strowman and Ricochet def. Alpha Academy by pinfall
- The Bad Bunny-Damian Priest hype video is played again
- Shawn Michaels and Adam Pearce are out to announce the next round of WWE Draft picks, but Brock Lesnar decides he wants to head to the ring now, Pearce sends out a phalanx of security guards, and Rhodes tries to get him a piece of Brock and ends up getting trapped by all the guards instead
- Matt Riddle is excited that he got drafted to the same show as the tag team champions so they can hang out all the time, but Kevin Owens is not as psyched about that
- Matt Riddle def. Jimmy Uso by pinfall
- Eric Bischoff (Raw) and Rob Van Dam (SmackDown) head out to make the next round of WWE Draft picks
- Jey Uso asks why Sikoa wasn’t at ringside for Jimmy’s match, and Heyman says Solo needs to stay concentrated on his assignment tonight
- Shinsuke Nakamura joins The Miz for Miz TV, and the A-Lister ends up eating a Kinshasa, as you might expect
- Omos def. local talent in a quick squash match
- Road Dogg and Molly Holly are next to introduce the Round 5 WWE Draft picks
- The Judgment Day is happy to be staying together on Raw, and delivers messages to Zelina Vega and Bad Bunny in multiple languages, but the LWO responds with a rousing speech from Rey Mysterio
- Damian Priest, Dominik Mysterio and Rhea Ripley def. Rey Mysterio, Santos Escobar and Zelina Vega when Priest pins Rey Mysterio after a South of Heaven
- Rhodes admits Lesnar is in his head but says that while Brock usually gets what he wants, he won’t on Saturday
- Bianca Belair says it doesn’t matter what show she’s on as long as she can represent, and Damage CTRL comes by to tell her that IYO SKY will beat her at Backlash, to which Belair accuses Bayley and Dakota Kai of holding SKY back
- Teddy Long (Raw) and JBL (SmackDown) are out to deliver the sixth and final round of draft picks
- Xavier Woods say The New Day will inject a little more energy back into Monday nights
- Seth Rollins vs. Solo Sikoa ends in a DQ as the Usos invade the ring, quickly followed by a brawl that involves Owens, Zayn and Riddle that ends the show