At long last, Tommaso Ciampa has found Johnny Gargano — and all he had to do was catch a group beating from Imperium to make it happen.
After searching high and low for Gargano for months on end to no avail, Ciampa was reunited with his former DIY tag team partner/arch nemesis at the end of Monday’s “WWE Raw.” Gargano hit the ring to fend off Ludwig Kaiser and Giovanni Vinci from beating Ciampa to a pulp following his unsuccessful Intercontinental Championship challenge against GUNTHER, as the champion casually waltzed away while his minions put the boots to the challenger.
But then Gargano’s music hit, and the former “NXT” Champion saved the day, warding off Kaiser and setting up for Meeting In the Middle, and the reunion was finally complete (though, in a matter of unfortunate timing, “Raw” faded to black before they could hit their finishing move).
Ciampa and Gargano, as DIY, won the “NXT” Tag Team Championships together at “NXT” TakeOver: Toronto in 2016, defeating The Revival (now known as reigning AEW World Tag Team Champions FTR) in a two-out-of-three-falls match. The pair would split less than a year later, when Ciampa attacked Gargano following a loss to The Authors of Pain, and they’d go on to feud for the better part of the next year. They’d reunite to make their debuts on both “Raw” and “Smackdown,” but that was short-lived. It wasn’t until Monday night that the two seemed back together, full time, and ready to shake up the tag team division on the main roster.
Some late changes were made to the lineup for tonight’s episode of “WWE Raw.”
According to PWInsider, Tegan Nox was originally set to answer the open challenge issued by the new “NXT” Women’s Champion, Becky Lynch. However, at some point before the show, Nox was pulled from the title match and replaced by Natalya, who has reportedly earned plenty of praise backstage following her involvement in the Superstar Spectacle in India.
The segment started with Lynch coming out and cutting a promo about how important the belt is to her and revealing that she would also be live on “NXT” tomorrow night with the belt. Natalya eventually came out, calling Lynch a “hypocritical ginger witch” and answering the challenge. The 15-year veteran ended up losing the match to Lynch, getting rolled up by the new champion following a back-and-forth match.
Getting back to Nox, she was relegated to a match against Xia Li that was recorded for “WWE Main Event.”
Another key change to tonight’s episode, according to PWInsider, was to push the match between Shinsuke Nakamura and Ricochet deeper into the show. The reported reasoning behind this was a desire by WWE officials to position more star power later in the episode, namely WWE World Heavyweight Champion Seth Rollins, who was involved in segments before and after the Nakamura-Ricocet match.
Nia Jax is back with WWE after making her return to programming during last night’s episode of Monday Night RAW.
This week’s edition of RAW saw WWE Women’s World Champion Rhea Ripley put her title on the line against Raquel Rodriguez, who was pulled off of the ring apron by the returning Jax.
This allowed Ripley to get the win, but the Women’s World Champion was attacked by Jax after the match, with the Irresistible Force standing over Ripley to end the show.
Jax was released from WWE in 2021 and made a one-off appearance for WWE during this year’s Women’s Royal Rumble match.
Fightful Select is reporting that Jax signed with WWE over a month ago after the company’s hiring freeze concluded in the summer.
Jax is WWE’s first main roster signing since Vince McMahon’s return to the company earlier in January.
Endeavor’s acquisition of WWE is unrelated to Nia’s return, and several people in the company expected to see her sooner.
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