Original plans for Damian Priest’s US Title Open challenge and why it was changed. The original direction for the opening segment revealed.
The WWE had a great opening segment on Monday Night RAW this week. Just hours before RAW went on air, the WWE announced that Damian Priest would kick off the show with an open challenge for his US title. His challenge was interrupted by Sheamus, Drew McIntyre, Bobby Lashley, Riddle, and Randy Orton.
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Sheamus and Drew McIntyre went on to fight The Archer Of Infamy in a triple threat match for the United States Championship. Orton and Lashley went on to fight each other in a tag team match also involving Riddle and MVP. Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Radio has now revealed what the original idea was.
Original plans for Damian Priest’s US Title Open challenge and why it was changed
“It appears the decision was that they’re gonna go with Randy Orton and Bobby Lashley. So therefore they wanted Randy Orton in there with Bobby Lashley, which took Sheamus out of that match. And I did hear that Drew and Priest at one point was going to be a singles match, but when they took Sheamus out (of the Lashley match), Sheamus was moved, and they made it into a three-way match. There were a million changes during the day, and at the end of the day, every match advertised didn’t happen.”
As mentioned in the report above, none of the matches advertised by WWE took place on RAW this week. The WWE had announced that Sheamus would be facing Bobby Lashley and Damian Priest would take on Drew McIntyre, but these matches were scrapped at the last minute. They had also announced The Miz vs. John Morrison but even that ended up being scrapped.
According to PWInsider, multiple sources described Monday as one of the “longest” days in a long time for the WWE creative team. The afternoon was described as a “crazy day” backstage at the Paycom Center in Oklahoma City as there were a lot of changes being made to plans for the show.
Vince McMahon was reportedly “extremely unhappy” with the original plans for RAW. He “ripped up the script” several times during the day, including the original plans, and then the initial re-write.
Vince was said to be “the loudest and angriest” one source had ever seen him on a show day. It was noted that there was no official direction or plan for last night’s RAW episode until 6pm ET.
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