LAFAYETTE, La. — The deal is this: John Cena wants a piece of Brock Lesnar, and if he doesn’t get it, Paul Heyman is the one who will pay the price. The Cenation leader conveyed as much during Heyman’s final missive before Night of Champions, threatening the WWE World Heavyweight Champion’s advocate with severe bodily harm should The Conqueror get cold feet. He even gave Lesnar a time frame to emerge from his lair: He had until “halftime,” or halfway through the show. The clock is on.
Watch: Who's guarding Heyman?
He didn’t even need any coffee this time around: In the latest installment of an in-ring rivalry that extends back to The Attitude Era, Chris Jericho battled (and defeated) Kane six days before stepping into the ring against the Director of Operations’ fellow Authority member Randy Orton. Demonstrating the same savvy that landed him a corner office at WWE HQ, Kane made it a point to target the knee Y2J tweaked against Bray Wyatt the previous week. That left The Ayatollah of Rock ’n’ Rolla vulnerable to an offensive attack that split his chin open.
Watch: Kane gets creative against Y2J | Jericho and Kane go to the mat
Once Jericho did get his legs up under him (literally), though, he took control and never let go. Beginning with a dropkick that took an airborne Kane directly out of the sky, Y2J shifted into third, countering two Chokeslams and a Tombstone Piledriver before sending Kane face-first into the turnbuckle the corporate demon exposed earlier in the match. One rollup later and it was 1-2-3 for Y2J. Commence the breaking down of the walls.
It’s almost as if Jack Swagger took those “You let America down” remarks from Bo Dallas personally. Fittingly enough, given divided response from the WWE Universe — chants of “We the People” and “We Bo-lieve” clashed throughout the contest — Swagger and Bo battled each other to almost a dead heat for the majority of their long-stewing tilt on Raw. Swagger’s amateur background enabled him to manhandle Dallas in the early going, but the former NXT Champion found his opening with a hammering series of elbows and knees.
Watch: Bo-lieve in Jack Swagger
Alas, Bo’s hubris got the better of him when he stood atop the turnbuckle and crooned “BO-LIEVE!” with Swagger prone on the canvas. Bo's ensuing diving knee found nothing but mat and then “Big Hoss” came to furious life. Dallas stayed with the former World Heavyweight Champion as long as he could, even employing an innovative roll-up that nearly did the job. Swagger, however, countered with a Patriot Lock that turned Bo into a rag doll … if rag dolls could tap out, that is.
In the ongoing battle of the Bellas, it is now Nikki who has won the latest battle. Although the former Divas Champion didn’t defeat her sister in singles competition, Nikki did help captain a two-Diva team to victory over Brie Bella and AJ Lee in a big-time Divas Tag Team Match on Raw. It didn’t hurt Nikki’s cause that her partner was the current Divas Champion, Paige, either. In fact, Nikki immediately tagged the champ in rather than mix it up with her sister, and Paige handled her team’s business with brutal efficiency, draping Brie over the ropes and pulverizing her with knees to the ribs.
Photos: Tag team action pits Bella against Bella
Brie didn’t even get a chance to tag AJ when she did get separation, as Nikki scuttled behind The Black Widow and hauled her off the apron. Paige finished Brie off with the Ram-Paige, and Nikki got the last laugh on her sister by dropping her after the bell with the Nikki Rack Attack.
If there’s a lesson to be learned from SmackDown, it’s that one does not interrupt Bray Wyatt and expect to get away unscathed. After the giant barred The Eater of Worlds from interfering in a 10-Man Tag Team Match on Friday, Wyatt met Show in singles competition and gave the former World Heavyweight Champion a fight worthy of his lofty rhetoric. Promising to slay the modern-day Goliath, Wyatt threw caution to the wind by hurling his own body headlong into Show’s tree-trunk torso.
Watch: Buzzards circle Big Show | Photos of the epic battle
Once he took Show off his feet, “The Man of 1,000 Truths” relied on vicious headlocks to keep him down, but it didn’t last long. Show made it to his feet and planted Wyatt with an inverted DDT, causing Luke Harper & Erick Rowan to run interference. It cost Wyatt the match and cost his Family a double-chokeslam. Judging by Bray’s giddy reaction, though, he may have found a weakness in his personal Goliath after all.
If these are, indeed, Sheamus and The Usos’ last days sporting championship gold, they certainly know how to make the most of them. The troika of champions sent their No. 1 contenders packing on Raw with a coordinated effort against Cesaro ( who’ll face the Irishman for the U.S. Title) and Gold & Stardust ( currently vying for the WWE Tag Team Titles). And it was certainly a tough road to do so.
Watch: Six-way brawl erupts on Raw
Gold & Stardust, typically reliant on theatrics and psychological warfare, adopted the heavy-hitting attitude of their polyglot partner and knocked their opponents all across the four corners of the ring. Cesaro got his licks in, too, mocking Sheamus by using Ten Beats of the Bodhrán against one of The Usos early on in the contest. The biggest brawler of the bout was by far Sheamus, though, whose offense against Stardust kicked off a Pier-Six Brawl that ended with an Uso frog splash to a Superkicked Cesaro for the win.
It’s rare that Brock Lesnar breaks his code and fights for free. But when he does? He really, really goes for it. John Cena poked The Beast Incarnate with the sting of a thousand insults, even going so far as to threaten Paul Heyman with a beating should Lesnar refuse to answer his call. Heyman yet again attempted to goad Cena into abandoning his principles for an outright beating. Just as he did last week, Cena refused to give in to the whims of The One Behind the One in 21-1 ... until Heyman took things one step too far and caught a shove for his troubles. Right on cue, The Anomaly made his entrance and took the fight to his No. 1 contender, though he was met in such a brutal fashion by Cena that WWE security was summoned to separate the two.
The reason behind The Funkadactyls’ breakup was exposed on “Total Divas” and apparently that was enough to spur Naomi & Cameron to face off one last time in a match of funkitude past. The former Funkadactyls unleashed hell on each other in a fight that would have even the staunchest viewers calling their mommas in terror. Cameron in particular fought dirty with an elbow to the eye that knocked Naomi off the apron and left her vulnerable to a long stretch of offense. Thanks to some last-minute quick-thinking and a timely sunset flip, Naomi managed to get Cameron down to the mat, transitioning quickly into her self-dubbed "SLAY-mission" hold to tap her former friend out. Girl, bye.
Even a double-dose of awesomeness wasn’t enough to stall Intercontinental Champion Dolph Ziggler’s momentum. Ziggler teamed up with his stunt double, R-Truth (aka “R-Ziggler”), to knock off The Miz & Damien Sandow (aka Damien Mizdow) just six days before his Intercontinental Title rematch at Night of Champions. In fact, Truth fulfilled his obligations as a stunt double quite efficiently, taking the brunt of Miz and Sandow’s offense before tagging in the champ to finish the job. He did so in typically showoffish fashion, causing a miscommunication that led to Miz accidentally decking Sandow. Before Miz could recover, Ziggler pounced with the Zig Zag and that was that. Too bad for Miz.
So much for brains over brawn. The self-described creator of The Shield got a taste of its resident annihilator when Seth Rollins went head-to-head with Roman Reigns for the first time ever on Raw. And for a Superstar who was supposedly familiar with everything Reigns was capable of, Rollins was surprisingly cavalier when it came to his game plan against a man who has become one of WWE’s fastest-rising Superstars.
Watch: Shield brothers collide on Raw | Photos of the grudge match
Rollins did get his licks in here and there. An early strike to the face left The Big Dog with a bloody nose, and The Aerialist wisely dodged both his former tag-team partner’s leaping dropkick on the apron and the Spear, following the latter up with a superkick to Reigns’ chin. Rollins’ offense continued apace for several minutes, but an overly ambitious attempt at a Curb Stomp to the still-standing Roman proved his decisive mistake when Reigns took off, ricocheted off the ropes and dropped Rollins with the Spear.
If you’re going to rally America, it helps to have The World’s Strongest Man as your champion. Few men are uniquely as qualified to lead the homeland as Mark Henry, a former Olympian whose bona fides speak for themselves and whose passion for his country knows no bounds. Henry wasn’t about to get through his “Rally for America” without an interruption by Lana and Rusev, though. Henry attempted to counter by leading the Pledge of Allegiance and The Super Athlete responded with punishment. Yet Rusev severely underestimated whom he was dealing with. Henry refused to be crushed and powered his way out of the Accolade before sending Rusev tumbling from the ring. Indeed, that’s what he does.