Here we are on Monday again. Some good matches advertised for tonight. The final place in the men’s Elimination Chamber will be taken by the winner of a fatal four-way between Matt Hardy, Bray Wyatt, Finn Balor and Apollo Crews. Bayley will face Sasha Banks one on one. We will find out what Seth Rollins plans to do next, now he’s lost his second tag team partner. We should find out what’s going on with Alexa Bliss and Mickie James. And John Cena is set to open the show.

I’m Amanda and I’m here to make sure you don’t miss anything on Monday Night RAW.

The Opening Segment

The show opened with John Cena, and a recap of the triple threat last week. Cena talked about the importance of WrestleMania and the WrestleMania moment.

He moved on to Elimination Chamber, saying he needs to win the chamber match for the first time in 15 years or he doesn’t have a road to WrestleMania. He needs to win the most unwinnable match to get a chance to face the most unbeatable champion in WWE history. He loves to make the impossible possible, so he’s going to do it.

The Miz and Miztourage   Miz questioned whether Cena can go on to main event WrestleMania – ‘It’s not 2013, it’s 2018, year of The Miz’. Miz is planning to become the first ever Intercontinental and Universal Champion, so he’s going to win the chamber match.

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Cena said Miz has no chance against Lesnar, Miz said he has because he’s smarter and he doesn’t mind cheating (ok, he didn’t say cheating, but that’s what he meant).

A few more insults and Cena challenged Miz to a match – loser enters the chamber first. The Miz said he’s not that stupid, then Dallas and Axel attacked Cena. Once Cena was laid out Miz accepted and called for a referee.

Kurt Angle came out instead, authorised the match, then ejected The Miztourage from ringside.

John Cena Vs The Miz – Loser enters the Elimination Chamber first

Miz tried to cover Cena while Cena was still down from the Miztourage attack. Unsurprisingly, John Cena kicked out.

It turned into a great opening match. Miz kept going for the cover, and his frustration grew with each kick out. And there were a lot of kick outs, from both of them.

Cena spent a long time in a sleeper hold. Miz got him in the figure four, but Cena powered his way out and got the STF on only for Miz to get to the ropes.

Miz hit a DDT off Cena’s failed attempt at an AA, for another two-count. As Miz charged towards him, Cena scooped him up and hit the AA. Miz kicked out, and so it went on.

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Miz moved the ropes when Cena was on them sending him crashing down onto them and then to the mat. He put the figure four back on, Cena reversed into the STF, Miz got to the ropes again. Moments later, John Cena kicked out of the Skull Crushing Finale.

Miz went for the Skull Crushing Finale from the top turnbuckle, instead, Cena hit the AA from up there. and got the pin. Miz will be the first entrant to the Elimination Chamber.

The Other Stuff

– Matt Hardy promo ahead of the four-way tonight. The other competitors second chance is already ‘ovah’. He has consulted with the seven deities and they have blessed him with the strength power and dexterity to render them obsolete. He will change the Elimination Chamber into the deletion chamber

– Gallows and Anderson cut a promo with a highly distracting Nerd-O-Meter graphic. They were calling out The Revival ahead of their match, but the noise which accompanied the graphic was awful.

– The Revival vs The Club – The Revival attacked Gallows and Anderson on the way to the ring and took out Gallows’ knee. The match went on anyway, Gallows took a lot of punishment before tagging in Karl Anderson. Scott Dawson took out Gallows on the outside by sending him into the steps. He wasn’t back in time to stop Anderson taking a Shatter Machine. The Revival won.

– A recap of the tag match Jason Jordan messed up for Rollins and Reigns last week was shown ahead of Kurt Angle coming to the ring. He started by announcing Ronda Rousey will be signing her official WWE contract at Elimination Chamber (she’s confirmed as joining the RAW roster). Then he went on to say that Jason Jordan has had neck surgery and will definitely miss WrestleMania. He started telling the crowd that they were bad if they took pleasure in the news, which was Seth Rollins cue to come out.

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Rollins said he was sorry to hear about Jordan, then talked about himself. He spoke about cashing in his Money in the Bank to become champion, hurting his knee and missing the next WrestleMania. He doesn’t want to miss another one, and he has no path to this year’s. When Angle joined as GM he told Rollins he’d be a mainstay of RAW, now Seth Rollins wants to turn it back into Monday Night Rollins. He wants Lesnar at WrestleMania, so he wants into the Elimination Chamber match. He asked Angle to make the four-way into a five-way. Angle said it wasn’t fair to the other four guys but put it to the crowd. The crowd ‘yessed’ and it was done.

– Bray Wyatt’s promo said Rollins doesn’t deserve the chance, and neither do any of the rest. He will win the Elimination Chamber match for the second year in a row and go on the slay The Beast.

– Sasha Banks vs Bayley – We’ve been waiting for a turn for much too long now. Sasha Banks has been giving us glimpses of her old character for a while, and we saw more of it in this one. The match got steadily more aggressive and less friendly as it went on. To be honest, anyone expecting them to have a less than excellent match just hasn’t been paying attention. Bayley missed the elbow drop and landed on her bad shoulder, Banks locked in the Bank Statement, Bayley made the ropes. Moments later, Bayley delivered a Bayley to belly from the second rope for the win. Post-match, after an emotional stare down between them, Nia Jax attacked them both. Guess we’re waiting a bit longer for that turn.

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– Jax was asked why she’d done it. She said those two had taken Asuka to her limit, and she destroyed them both in seconds. She’s the only woman who can break Asuka’s streak.

– Backstage with Seth Rollins and Roman Reigns. Reigns said he hopes Rollins gets the spot, so he can eliminate him, like he did at Royal Rumble – all good natured. Sheamus and Cesaro arrived to give Rollins a hard time about being a lousy tag team partner. Reigns put them back in their box and they left.

– Nice hype package for Asuka chronicling her 860 day undefeated streak and impressive list of achievements.

– Titus Worldwide were interviewed by Renee Young, until Titus O’Neil dismissed her. He asked Crews about each of the competitors in the now five-way. It finished with them all singing ‘Crews can’t lose’.

– Mickie James and Alexa Bliss had a backstage conversation. Bliss apparently asked Angle to let them team up against Absolution. Mickie James asked her to explain why she helped her last week and reminded Bliss of the awful things she did. Bliss said her actions were born of jealousy and expressed a worry that if Absolution win the title they will just pass it back and forth.  James said they can team up tonight, but she’s coming for the title at Elimination Chamber.

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– Alexa Bliss and Mickie James vs Sonya Deville and Mandy Rose. Decent match. Mickie James did the majority of the work for her team. Paige distracted Alexa Bliss while Sonya Deville snuck up on her and pulled her off the apron. Deville Kept Bliss away while Rose planted James on her face and pinned her. Bliss managed to get back into the ring to save Mickie James from the post-match attack by Absolution.

– Elias sang about his Elimination Chamber opponents. He was interrupted by Braun Strowman being announced. Stroman was sat on a stool with a mic and a double bass. He broke the strings, then sang to Elias. He carried the double bass down to the ring on his shoulder but left it ringside when Elias put down his guitar. Elias picked his guitar up to hit Strowman and got flattened instead. Elias crawled up the ramp, Strowman chased him down and broke the double bass over his back

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– Finn Balor’s promo summed up everyone else’s promos then said he doesn’t care what they want, he’s going to win the match, then win back what he never lost, the Universal Championship.

– Sheamus vs Roman Reigns – That we get Sheamus vs Reigns, with no fanfare, just shows how good RAW is right now. Cesaro got involved a few times, first by distracted Reigns on the outside, allowing Sheamus to deliver a rolling senton. It was another ‘how can he make him stay down’ kind of a match. Reigns hit a Superman punch when Sheamus went for the Brogue kick, Sheamus kicked out. Reigns kicked out of a roll-up off a Cesaro distraction, then again from a knee to the jaw. Cesaro went for Reigns out on the outside and got dumped into the crowd and Superman punched. That gave Sheamus an opportunity to take control but, as Sheamus jumped off the top turnbuckle, Reigns speared him out of mid-air and got the three.

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– Ivory is the latest inductee announced for this year’s Hall of Fame.

The Main Event – Finn Balor vs Matt Hardy vs Bray Wyatt vs Apollo Crews vs Seth Rollins – Fatal Five-Way for the last Elimination Chamber spot

The match was utter chaos, as any five-way should be. Everyone got their finisher in at least once, and there was the obligatory tower of doom spot.

With Balor, Crews, and Rollins in the match, there was a lot of flying about. Seth Rollins was making full use of being granted the opportunity, he was everywhere, which also meant he took a lot of punishment. At one point he delivered three suicide dives in quick succession.

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Matt Hardy and Bray Wyatt’s feud is still going strong. They had a bit of a sequence together, and Wyatt took Hardy out of the match with Sister Abigail on the outside.

Balor and Rollins pinned Bray Wyatt together off the tower of doom. Both celebrated, and they were still arguing as RAW went off the air. A few minutes after the show Kurt Angle announced that both men would be in the Elimination Chamber match making it the first ever seven-man Elimination Chamber match.

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That’s your lot. It was another week where at least three of the matches could have main evented without anyone thinking anything of it. RAW is actually pretty good right now. The men’s Elimination Chamber match is set, and the PPV card is looking good. Join me next week for the recap of the Elimination Chamber go home show.