The stipulation of Shane McMahon’s Hell in a Cell match with the Undertaker at WrestleMania 32 on Sunday night was that only a win over the Phenom would give him control of Monday Night Raw.
Bruised and battered in the vicious bout, Shane-O-Mac stepped foot onto Raw‘s stage last night to say goodbye to the WWE Universe. However, as his music blared and he turned his back on the crowd to head backstage, Vince McMahon stopped him short and warned, “Nobody upstages me!”
With the capacity crowd chanting “Let him run it, let him run it,” Vince decided right then and there, “OK, let’s see what the hell you’ve got. OK, come on! Go!” With that, Mr. McMahon shockingly handed the reins of Raw to his son.
The Raw after WrestleMania, with Shane at the helm, proved to be pretty exciting, as Shane-O-Mac rolled out the red carpet for the debut of NXT’s Apollo Crews, Baron Corbin appeared fresh off his Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal win Sunday night and Enzo and Cass interrupted the show, to the crowd’s delight.
Shane further stamped his presence controlling WWE’s flagship program by setting up a fatal fourway match to declare the No. 1 contender for Roman Reigns’ newly-won World Heavyweight championship. In doing so, Shane pitted Chris Jericho, AJ Styles, Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn in the ring against each other, but when Zayn was put out of action by KO before the match, Cesaro, returning from injury, took his place. In the end, Styles won the match and became the No. 1 contender for Reigns’ title. Quite the splashy show, Shane!
Now, the question is: will Vince allow Shane to continue running Raw? Or will he only appear on the show next Monday night to berate the job that Shane did out of spite and take back full control? There’s no doubt that Shane’s version of Raw had the flagship program playing out with a certain edge to it — courtesy of the deluge of NXT talent that Shane-O-Mac allowed to appear.
We think it would be great if Vince begrudgingly admits that Shane did a hell of a job running Raw, allowing him to continue having full control, only for Stephanie McMahon and Triple H to vie for some of that power.
Now, that would be pure entertainment.