Credit: Wrestling Observer & Pro Wrestling Insider
Tonight, Randy Orton and Batista are both expected to win and go right into a feud with each other. WWE has been planning the Batista-Orton feud since Wrestlemania, and had Orton not been injured, this would have been done months ago. Orton and Batista are epxected to feud up till Survivor Series with no indication as to what after that.
Chris Benoit is the heavy favorite to win against Orlando Jordan tonight and he is expected to go into a feud with the newly turned William Regal. WWE has the mindset of trying a match first and then judging the reaction to it. They did this with Guerrero-Mysterio at the beginning of the year on SmackDown! and turned it into a high profile feud, and with Regal and Benoit, WWE placed them in a match on Velocity and heavily promoted it to see how it would do. The overall reaction was that the match was a serious candidate for WWE match of the year and thus, WWE is planning on pushing a feud between the two.
As has been reported for the past few weeks, Chris Jericho is taking time off after Summerslam so John Cena will be getting the clean win over him and entering into a program with Kurt Angle, who is expected to cheat to beat Eugene tonight. WWE still wants to have Eugene as a main part of Raw, but can not risk him winning over Angle and making Angle look weak when Angle has a title shot next month at Unforgiven.
Many backstage are doubting both the Edge-Hardy and Batista-JBL feuds saying that both matches need to involve heavy brawling otherwise it will be disappointing. Many have been wondering why the Edge-Hardy match did not have a special stipulation, and the answer is that WWE already has two heavily promoted stipulation matches and to do more would be overkill. Despite having low expectations for this match, many have been saying that the crowd will be into the match more so than usual as it is Hardy’s first major bout back and Batista’s home town.
