WWE.com’s main topic in hand for tonight’s edition of Monday Night RAW is the challenge laid out by Shawn Michaels last week for a one-on-one match against Hulk Hogan at SummerSlam. It was plugged earlier tonight on Hogan Knows Best on Vh-1, that Hulk Hogan will appear on RAW tonight and give his answer. If you are one of the three people wondering what the answer is, then yes, Hogan will accept the challenge, and the two will build up to what should be a good storyline and a great match at SummerSlam.
The WWE.com preivew mentions that the Diva Search continues this week. I don’t know what they’re supposed to be doing tonight, but hopefully it’ll be kept short, and it won’t be painful. I can dream, right?
Also on the WWE website, they ask what could be next for John Cena and Chris Jericho following the announcement last week that the two will fight at SummerSlam for the WWE Championship. WWE should do a good job of building up Jericho properly for the match, so I expect to see some of that tonight. I also hope this will elevate Jericho to a top-level guy and keep him there after SummerSlam. They need more fresh stars at the top, and Jericho is someone who’s been kept out of there for quite some time. I’m also sure there’ll be some backlash from the FU Bischoff took last week, so I won’t be surprised if Cena is booked into an “impossible to overcome” handicap match.
The best thing to do with Matt Hardy this week is to keep him off TV. If the company is smart, they will refer to the angle and what happened through Edge and Lita, but will keep Matt away. That way he really creates the illusion that he is not under contract. His web site is down and his appearance on Byte This! on Wednesday where he got into it with Lita did an OK job of continuing the storyline. The pieces need to come together within a week or two, where Hardy should lay off his plan or make a challenge for a match. This might take longer, as well. Until then, however, he should be very carefully booked, and I think a good decision would be to keep him off tonight.
From what I’ve read, it’s pretty much a lock that Triple H will not be around for a while. The Game refused to do a match with Ric Flair at SummerSlam, so he shouldn’t be around for another month. Unless they’ve come up with something for him to do at SummerSlam, I’d expect him to return now. I highly doubt that though.
We might find out what’s Kurt Angle doing at SummerSlam. It’ll be cool if Striker shows up again.
I’m not sure what Carlito and Shelton Benjamin can do other than fight each other, but unless other names are added to the battle over the IC title, then I don’t see either Carlito or Shelton doing anything but feuding themselves again.
That should do it for this edition.
