Major Changes Made To WWE Raw After Royal Rumble, Original Plans; More Production Notes

WWE Raw went through some heavy changes again for January 31.

The last revision wasn’t handed out until shortly before the show Monday night, and had a change to that, even. Montez Ford was scheduled to face Dolph Ziggler, at least until higher ups were smartened up by numerous people to the fact that his teammate Angelo Dawkins is from Cincinnati, where the show was held.

The main event of the show was changed from early drafts as well. Originally, the Elimination Chamber was set to feature Bobby Lashley and Brock Lesnar for sure, but a main event as of Sunday was scheduled to add participants. Seth Rollins, Damian Priest, AJ Styles, Kevin Owens and Austin Theory were scheduled to compete in a 5-way match, with the person eating the pin set to be excluded from Elimination Chamber,

The Main event matches saw Veer Mahaan vs. Akira Tozawa produced by Kenny Dykstra and Shawn Daivari producing Liv Morgan vs. Doudrop. The Smackdown Dark Matches of Tommaso Ciampa vs. Roderick Strong and Raquel Gonzalez vs. Io Shirai were both produced by Kenny Dykstra. Also, the dark match main event Friday was produced by Jason Jordan.

WWE set more matches up than usual for next week’s show because they had to have their creative plans firmed up a lot more because they’re taping the Elimination go home show that same night.

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