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WWE News for Raw Next Week: Big Returns, Talk Show Segment, Tag Team Title Match

By John Canton • Published 1st January 2019
TJR Wrestling

The first 2019 episode of WWE’s Monday Night Raw takes place next Monday night, January 7th in Orlando and WWE is advertising the appearances of some big names. They promoted these things towards the end of this week’s Raw, which I reviewed here in case you missed it.

John Cena will be on Raw next week. Cena is also appearing on Smackdown tonight. It’s not known what Cena might be doing on Raw aside from showing up for a promo that could lead to a match. Cena has noted that he is filming another movie at the end of January, so he may not be a part of WWE’s Royal Rumble event on January 27th.

Brock Lesnar, the Universal Champion, returns to Raw next week along with his advocate Paul Heyman. Lesnar is scheduled to defend the Universal Title against Braun Strowman at the Royal Rumble

Speaking of Strowman, he is also set to return next week as well. He has been rehabbing his right elbow, which he had surgery on about a month ago. It’s not known if he’ll have a match before the Royal Rumble or if WWE plays it safe with him by letting him rest up until the Rumble match.

The Raw Tag Team Titles will be on the line as well with champions Bobby Roode and Chad Gable defending their titles against The Revival, who get a rematch from Christmas Eve after the wrong man was pinned in the match.

There was also a video featuring Alexa Bliss talking about how next week on Raw, she’s going to host the “Moment of Bliss” talk show for the first time. Her guest is Raw Women’s Champion Ronda Rousey, so that should be interesting.

As I noted in the Raw Deal, it’s smart of WWE to promote a bunch of big names and a title match next week, but they are facing some tough competition as well. The College Football Championship game takes place on Monday night on ESPN with Alabama facing Clemson. The championship game usually does between 25 to 30 million viewers according to this ESPN article, so that’s going to have a major effect on Raw’s viewership numbers even with big names coming back to Raw.