RAW Deal: Do all roads lead to Balor Club?

LONDON—It’s been an entire week of wrestling (my apologies for not writing earlier, it’s been a busy Saturday) and I’m glad to say that as we go into a new one, the stories we’ve been getting on mainstream TV and local wrestling have been engaging, each in their own little ways.

Let’s go into the most important ones:

Who are Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows really working for?

The prominent members of the Bullet Club finally debuted a couple of episodes ago, and last Monday on RAW they decided to make a bigger splash than they did in their debut and hit Roman Reigns in plain view of their former leader, AJ Styles. Of course the story isn’t going to be that simple; of course it isn’t as easy as Styles sending them out to attack his opponent at Payback. (Not that Styles needs it, anyway—he’s good enough to do without his lackeys, and he needs to remain the clear babyface in this feud.)

Anderson and Gallows have already spoken out and said they weren’t working for Styles (a premature reveal, in my opinion) so if that’s the case, then why would they attack Reigns? Is it possible that they’re working for Reigns, setting up some sort of eventual double-cross by making Styles’s involvement look ambiguous? 

Or are they going to be like the Shield was back in 2012, a neutral but destructive force in the WWE? Could they be working for a third party, someone like…

Is Finn Balor showing up on RAW this week?

All the big things in the WWE happen earlier in the week, but something big happened at an NXT live event in Lowell, Massachussetts, something that rarely happens in the WWE anymore: Samoa Joe finally defeated Finn Balor to win the NXT Championship.

Although Balor won the title from Kevin Owens at what was essentially a televised house show in Japan, the fact that this happened at such a place, without any indications that this might be something for broadcast in the near future certainly raises more than a few eyebrows. While it’s great that these things can still happen at a house show (thereby increasing the must-see potential of NXT) the timing is definitely intriguing. 

NXT Champions losing their gold is almost always a sign of a call-up sooner rather than later, and with Anderson and Gallows already creating chaos on RAW, is it possible that not only does Balor show up on Monday, but also as the leader of the Balor Club?

I think this should happen. Balor coming up to lead Gallows and Anderson would infuse the main roster with some much-needed star power while they’re still reeling from the losses of their big stars, and it would save both Styles and Reigns from the hokey convention of having to lead a group. Styles doesn’t need it as a major babyface who pulls out stellar match after stellar match on his own, and Reigns doesn’t need it as a bad guy-leaning polarizing figure who still needs to establish his own footing.

Let Balor be the leader and take Seth Rollins’s place as the wily, conniving heel. Rollins is sure to come back as a babyface, anyway, sometime next month. The fun’s gonna start there.

Will Mr. Sy manage to keep his job at Wrevolution X?

Okay, I’m cheating a little bit—this happened a couple of weeks ago, but this gives me an excuse to talk about last night’s PWR Live: Road to Wrevolution X at BF Homes, Parañaque. The dust has settled and the card for PWR’s biggest show of the year has already been set. 

What we know is that there’s gonna be a huge gauntlet match to determine a new #1 contender to the PHX Championship, there will be a triple threat match for the PWR Championship, Malaysia Pro Wrestling Regional Champion Shaukat will come over to take on Peter Versoza, and arguably the most important matchup of all, a match to determine whether Stan Sy gets to stay being the General Manager of PWR.

The match was made a couple of weeks ago when Mr. Sy and Chris Panzer guested on an episode of The Goat on FOX Sports, leading to a confrontation between him and one of the show’s hosts, KC Montero. The Royal Flush’s John Sebastian just so happened to be there, one thing led to another, and Mr. Sy ended up making a match between the two wrestlers. If Panzer loses, Mr. Sy loses his job as PWR’s General Manager; if Sebastian loses, Montero’s out as a host of The GOAT.

If you’re looking for a good reason to keep up with this storyline at all, let it be the fact that this might very well be PWR’s first foray into the relatively more mainstream side of Philippine pop culture—and one show will be walking out of this match changed forever. If Wrevolution X is their WrestleMania, then it’s only right that they get a celebrity involved on the biggest night of the year. 

I’m pretty stoked to see where this goes, and what else PWR can come up with in their future.

Do you listen to podcasts? Would you want to listen to a local podcast about pro wrestling? If the answers to those questions – especially that last one – are yes, then you should check out the cleverly-named Smark Gilas-Pilipinas Podcast, featuring Mellow 94.7 DJ and PWR General Manager Stan Sy, wrestling writer Romeo Moran, and all-around multimedia person and former voice of PWR Raf Camus! This week, they talk about RAW and watch the Edge and Christian Show That Totally Reeks of Awesomeness on 4/20! – Rappler.com