New WWE Champions! Sasha Banks Update! WWE Stars UPSET Backstage?! | WrestleTalk News June 2019

We’ve got new Raw tag team champions! Is Cesaro injured?! And The Baron and OmniShane Midcard Vortexes are perilously close to merging!

And more WWE stars are upset backstage with Super Arabia!

Click the timestamps in the video description below to go straight to any of those stories.

I’m Oli Davis – give us a subscribe, press the thumbs up button, and answer our question of the day in the comments: Do you think Shane McMahon has the good kind of heel heat… or just go-away heat? Because I’ll be replying to people FROM OUTTA NOWHERE! And click the ‘i’ above my head to give your rating of the show – where you can choose from: RawSome, Cor, AVRAWGE, Poor and RawFul – as I review the 10th June episode of Monday Night Raw!

Seth Rollins opened the show holding a steel chair, a symbol of how he slew the beast Brock Lesnar yet again at Super Showdown. Although he should’ve walked out holding a banana peel, because whatever Paul Heyman slipped on while trying to cash-in the Money in the Bank briefcase was far more responsible for saving his Universal title.

Baron Corbin interrupted Seth’s victory promo to some good heat from the San Jose crowd to reveal their Title match at Stomping Ground will have a special referee that Corbin gets to pick… because authority figures aren’t a thing anymore *wink* It’s Shane McMahon. Shane McMahon is definitely an authority figure.

Sami Zayn came out to defend Corbin, because nobody takes Baron seriously by himself, and was soon backed up by Kevin Owens to set up Rollins vs KO as the night’s main event. Oh dear god, they might’ve avoided Saudi Arabia, but not even Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens can escape the pull of Baron Corbin’s midcard vortex!

After arguably the worst piece of fundamental booking at Super ShowDown, where Lucha House Party beat up Lars Sullivan in his debut match to lose via DQ, there was an elimination rematch here, where Lars pinned each member in a few minutes. Which is exactly what they should’ve done at Saudi Arabia.

The 24/7 title then set up a decent sub-narrative running throughout the night. R-Truth found himself stuck with Carmella, EC3, Cedric Alexander, Heath Slater and …Drake Maverick in an elevator for most of the show, after the undercard chased him in there with no referee, and breaking it by being over max capacity. Max Capacity is now on the list of Pro Wrestling name ideas.

And then a strange thing happened… without the undercard feuding over the title, the wrestlers began to bond over love, potential cannibalism, and …Drake Maverick not being Hornswoggle, he’s just a very small man.

But just when R-Truth was about to lead them all in a chorus of We Are Family, the elevator opened and friendship gave way to cruel, harsh ambition. I thought you really had something… Drake Maverick. Carmella saved Truth in the end to stay champion for another day.

 

Miz babyface-splained to Samoa Joe next how heelish it was to attack Rey Mysterio after he relinquished his US title due to shoulder injury and never fairly beating Joe for it in the first place. Only that’s not what happened, Rey just said it was because of the shoulder injury.

Miz and Joe were about to get into it over families when Braun Strowman, Bobby Lashley, Cesaro and Ricochet [BANG] all came out to say they should fight for the US title. Hollla, holla, it’s a six man tag, playas.

Which was very fun, mainly thanks to Ricochet and Cesaro, who continue to be the in-ring highlight of Raw with their amazing chemistry – but it unfortunately ended on a botched spot where the full force of Ricochet’s finishing 630 landed on Cesaro’s knee rather than his gut. There were fears that Cesaro was genuinely injured, but thankfully Ryan Satin is reporting he’s OK.

 

After a split screen interview between Lacey Evans and Becky Lynch earlier – where Seth was seen coaching his real-life girlfriend before they started. Oooh TheManSlayer, wait, that’s not right – and a backstage segment where Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross continued their awkward character fudging storyline, Bliss and Evans teamed up to take on Becky and hometown gal Bayley. Which, of course, meant Bayley took the pin.

You only get to win in your hometown if you’ve paid loads and loads of money.

This was so much better than the women’s matches on last week’s Raw, but unfortunately, Lacey’s offence continues to be a problem, where I’m confused over when a punch is a punch, and when it’s a Women’s Right. She hit Bayley with one of them for the win.

 

Paul Heyman then cut a promo trying to explain why Brock Lesnar didn’t just cash-in on Seth Rollins last Monday, and fillibustered it into saying Brock will now not tell people when he’ll cash in. Which would be exciting, if that wasn’t the whole Money in the Bank gimmick for the last decade and a half anyway.

 

The IIconics shockingly then won an actual match for a change! Sure, it was only against two local enhancement talents, but a win is a win. If only they had been doing this since becoming tag champs to build them up as a semi-credible in-ring threat, rather than losing everything they do.

 

Because Shane McMahon celebration segments weren’t overdone last week, we got yet another one here to honour his win over Roman Reigns at Super Showdown. There were balloons, there was champagne, there were even bagpipe players to serenade Drew McIntyre down to the ring. But it was sadly missing one crucial part: charisma. Long live the OmniShane!

Shane isn’t a good screen presence, especially when he’s overexposed in multiple segments twice a week, and the crowd let him know that by chanting ‘boring’.

For a chance to join the OmniShane, The Revival took on Curt Hawkins and Zack Ryder and tag team champions The Usos in a three-way…wait, Hawkins and Ryder are the champions? I just assumed the Usos were. Ok then!

The match went to an adbreak early, and came back just in time for the finishing sequence with loads of Usos superkicks and a Splash on Ryder, for Dawson to steal the pin. There was enough talent in this ring to put on a fantastic match, which, dare I say, might’ve made the tag team title change feel special. But unfortunately they didn’t get any time to do so, because Shane needed to talk about how he’s the Best in the World.

Thankfully it was followed up by the best thing in WWE for the last two months: Bray Wyatt’s Firefly Fun House. This week had Rambly Rabbit threaten to reveal what’s really been going on at the Fun House, so Wyatt bashed his brains in with an oversized mallet and turned him into a Breakfast Spread. This is so consistently well-executed and complex, it feels like it should be on another show.

And the main event went to Rollins taking on Owens with the Shane McMahon-picked Sami as an extra referee on the outside. Which means we might be one step closer to a catastrophic, WWE Universe ending event – the Corbin and OmniShane midcard vortexes merging, like two black holes forming a supermassive one, where then nothing will be able to escape!

The match was based around Zayn causing distractions, and eventually awarding a DQ victory to Owens when Seth put his hands on him.

Corbin ran down to beat Rollins up, but then scampered off, leaving Seth to wail on Sami yet again with a chair. Rollins sure does love chairs.

The six-man tag and Firefly Fun House segments were good, but the rest of this show felt incredibly missable. This week’s Raw is Poor.

And now over to Pete with the news!

Great review Oli! I’m here covering for Luke for the next couple of weeks while he’s on holiday. At least, I hope he’s on holiday. He might just be stuck in an elevator with no phone signal.

While that particular run of segments didn’t lead to any 24/7 title changes, the Raw Tag Team Championships did change hands on the show, with The Revival becoming two-time Raw Tag Team Champions after stealing a win from The Usos.

The Revival actually dropped the titles to Hawkins and Ryder at WrestleMania 35, before winning them back now, which sort of begs the question, was there a point to Hawkins and Ryder winning? Of course, it was a “WrestleMania Moment”, but with absolutely zero follow up. I don’t know why I’m still surprised at this point.

The Revival winning the Tag Team Championships may be seen as an incentive for Scott Dawson and Dash Wilder to stick around in WWE after their contracts expire due to their reported backstage frustration, however more than likely it’s simply being used a story piece to further the rivalry between them and The Usos. Prestigious championships, those ones.

While these two wantaway stars have just become the Raw Tag Champions, it’s another wantaway star that has grabbed the attention of media outlets with their seemingly public burial of the company.

Sasha Banks hasn’t been seen on WWE TV since WrestleMania 35, where her and former tag partner Bayley lost the women’s Tag Team championships to the IIconics. She is reportedly in a stalemate with WWE, refusing to return to the company due to ongoing frustrations surrounding that title loss.

Conflicting reports regarding her WWE status are now beginning to emerge, with it being reported by PWInsider that Banks would be filming content for the WWE 2K20 videogame yesterday. As such, this would probably indicate that she’s reached some sort of agreement with WWE. Or maybe not.

Over the weekend, Banks posted this tweet that says “There was nowhere to go, except everywhere” with a picture looking very sombre inside a wrestling ring. No idea what she could be talking about there.

On top of this, Banks liked a tweet from user   who said:

“With every passing Raw and Smackdown I grow less and less interested in the product. I’m starting to realise that I’m supporting a s****y company for its past greatness rather than critiquing its current b******t. I can’t even sit through Raw or Smackdown anymore.”

 

That’s some pretty inflammatory verbiage right there, and apparently an opinion that Banks shares.

 

And Banks isn’t the only one who’s seemingly harbouring some untoward thoughts regarding the company they’re contracted to, as now some more details regarding backstage unrest at Super Showdown have emerged.

It had previously been reported that the backstage feeling regarding Super Showdown was an unhappy one, with WrestleVotes reporting that their sources told them that it was “a train wreck” and “a disaster”, with Dave Meltzer reporting that his sources told him that “it sucked”, and “if it was up to them, they’d never go back”

So all in all, not great.

The situation is not getting better, with more and more reports surfacing surrounding the working conditions and backstage morale of the event.

Fightful is now reporting that while the temperature might have been a nifty little graphic on screen that the commentary team could harp on about, with their Real Feel or whatever they were saying, it was a real problem for the talent working the show.

There were “terrible tasting hydration salt drinks” being handed out backstage, why not just give them some prominently-placed Mountain Dew, it’s sure to solve everything, in an attempt to counter the heat. Only problem is, terrible tasting hydration salt drinks didn’t counter the heat, as the report goes on to say that the working conditions were “miserable and borderline unworkable”

But hey, WWE made a lot of money, so it’s all worth it, right? Right?

 

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