Change Made To Cody Rhodes WWE Raw Plans Revealed

WWE

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 prior to 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.

In looking at the format from Fightful and what happened on the show, one change does stand out, 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 actually happened on the show was that the two three-ways were flipped around, so the Rollins one was right after the Rhodes opening promo, and Rhodes’ three-way was after Otis vs Ali.

It’s unclear exactly why this changed, but it did allow for a confrontation between Rollins and Rhodes at the top of the stage when 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.

Rollins won his three-way, while Rhodes’ was actually won by Finn Balor after Rhodes was attacked by Brock Lesnar, setting up a rematch from Backlash for Night of Champions.

Rollins beat 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, Rollins vs 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 and 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

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