Here are off-air notes from Raw. It's still pretty cool to see Sting involved in WWE.
Ryback, Erick Rowan, and Dolph Ziggler were all backstage at Raw. That's not too big of a surprise. I wouldn't have been shocked to hear they were brought because the script was still being written and WWE might have ended up needing them.
Some Dallas Cowboys were at Raw. I wonder if WWE will try to incorporate them into WM32.
There is expected to be at least one NXT name in the Royal Rumble. I like the idea thrown around of Sami Zayn entering only to be eliminated by Kevin Owens. I also like the idea of it being a debut for someone like Adrian Neville to do his cool moves and wow the crowd.
Everything else from yesterday is after the break.
WWE announced via the WWE Network WrestleMania 32 will be in Dallas, as was expected. Mark Henry more or less confirmed that as his final Mania, as he's from Texas. It will be interesting to see what they do with him in that time frame, as that could easily be his last match. Does he go for the WWE Title, or will there be concern he's too old and "can't go at that level"? Time will tell.
Update: WWE put out an official press release. They've set a really high mark for themselves. It will be quite telling how many people they actually get for the event.
Cody Hall will debut as part of NJPW on an upcoming tour. It's good he's getting experience outside WWE developmental. That will help him once he presumably goes there.
WWE is being sued by former employees Vito and Adam Mercer. I don't know what odds there really are of them winning, but I'm sure it will get a good deal of attention.
Triple H broke character during the main event angle at Raw to console a young fan who was crying. I'm usually all about keeping character, but I can't be upset with his reasoning here. WWE does want to be a family-friendly show, after all. There are legitimate arguments to be made about whether heels should break character if they get too much heat and actually hurt someone's emotional state, but modern WWE wants to be seen as something akin to Disney instead of what it was in generations past.
The latest edition of Impact Wrestling went up to 387,000 viewers. They had a lot of advertising for that show, so a boost in audience is a good outcome of that. That's a pretty high mark for Destination America, so the sharp drop from Spike isn't a failure in that sense.
For my take on yesterday's PWInsider.com questions:
1. I guess that's possible, but it was probably just something Vince did because he thought it was hilarious and/or appealed to the target audience. He's an odd one.
2. It's possible, but I haven't seen anything to suggest that's their plan. I do think it might be hard to turn him heel and get him booed after the heart attack.
3. They're great at the props aspect of things, which is important since they're sports entertainment instead of wrestling.
4. Honestly, I don't think I'd mind if The Ascension got destroyed by the Raw Reunion legends at the Rumble and came back later as their NXT gimmick. Maybe them trying to be a team from decades back and getting smashed by legends could take them back to the dark place of the more "goth" Ascension gimmick. Maybe they could be Bray's new flunkies?
5. There's definitely a good portion of the audience that doesn't like what WWE does these days, and they are vocal. If they spent money supporting names like Rollins, Ambrose, etc. like Cena and Reigns fans spend for their guys, I think Vince would have to listen.
More wrestling tomorrow.
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