Backstage Rumors on Chaos Heading Into Raw, Vince McMahon Meeting With Writing Team Before Investors Call

– As previously reported, there was rumored to be a lot of “chaos” and backstage changes yesterday at the WWE Performance Center ahead of last night’s Monday Night Raw broadcast on the USA Network. Dave Meltzer commented on the backstage turmoil that’s been taking place in WWE that led to last night’s show on today’s edition of Wrestling Observer Radio.

According to Meltzer, the decision to bring back Shane McMahon on Raw this week was made last Wednesday (July 29) ahead of WWE’s Q2 investors call. Before the investors call, Vince McMahon assembled a meeting with the WWE writing team, knowing that he’d be under the gun the following day. Apparently, one of the only things that was agreed upon based on that meeting was that Shane McMahon would come in to host WWE’s attempt at presenting worked “shoot-style” fights. This resulted in last night’s Raw Underground segments.

The only other idea that was agreed upon during last week’s meeting was that Randy Orton and Ric Flair would take part in an angle that will appear on next week’s broadcast, since it didn’t take place last night. Flair did make an appearance on last night’s Raw and did a segment with Kevin Owens.

With regards to the backstage chaos for yesterday’s Raw TV taping, Meltzer commented that backstage staffers who are normally more optimistic about the WWE product thought things were starting to get bad because of WWE’s approach of throwing “a whole bunch of stuff against the wall and hope something sticks” approach for last night’s show.

Besides the debut of Shane McMahon hosting the Raw Underground, WWE hyped up the debut of a new faction for Raw with an official announcement before the broadcast. However, the faction only ended up appearing very briefly during the show when they set fire to a generator. It was later rumored that the WWE social media team jumped the gun on the new faction after news of them leaked earlier in the day.