Backstage News On WWE Changing Plans On This Week's RAW
The original plan for Monday's RAW was for the WWE Title chase to close the show.
This week's RAW saw RAW Women's Champion Becky Lynch retain over Liv Morgan in the main event. The show opened with WWE Champion Big E defeating Kevin Owens in a non-title bout, which saw interference from Seth Rollins. That led to Bobby Lashley hitting the ring to take out Big E, Rollins and Owens.
At one point the plan was to close the show with the Steel Cage match and the Lashley angle, according to PWInsider. However, there was a push during the day to go with Morgan vs. Lynch. The decision was made to go with the title match after it was pointed out how this was the 17th anniversary of WWE Hall of Famers Lita and Trish Stratus headlining RAW.
While the third hour viewership dropped significantly compared to the first and second hour (the first hour drew 1.669 million viewers, the second hour drew 1.636 million viewers, the third hour drew 1.494 million viewers) this week, people in WWE were pointing to the strong success of Morgan vs. Lynch as far as the digital side goes. As of this writing, the match has done 726,000 views on YouTube alone.
The original plan for the RAW opener was to feature an in-ring segment with Big E and Owens setting up the Steel Cage match, which would've closed the show.
Stay tuned for more.