WWE Raw ended Monday night with Randy Orton holding up both the WWE and World Heavyweight titles, with a match set for the TLC pay-per-view where both titles will be on the line. It must be noted that this hasn't been billed as a "unification" match yet, implying right now that the winner will hold both titles and not make them one single championship.
The timing is interesting. It will certainly boost interest for TLC, a pay-per-view that isn't a traditional big hit for WWE. To generalize that point, what might raise eyebrows is the fact that we aren't seeing a match of this magnitude on a bigger pay-per-view stage, leading me to believe that we won't get a definitive winner at TLC and that the saga of crowning a unified champion (if that is the path that will be taken) will continue into 2014.
The single biggest thing that stuck out to me from Raw -- other than the gap in Michael Strahan's teeth ... low-hanging fruit, I know, I had to go there. Hey, he rocks it proudly -- is the fact that pretty much every match we saw on Raw was something we had seen in the past seven days.
Taking a look at each one:
-- The Shield vs. the Rhodes Brothers and Rey Mysterio was a subset of the traditional Survivor Series match we saw Sunday night.
-- Big E Langston and Mark Henry vs. Curtis Axel and Ryback were two matches at Survivor Series merged into one tag-team match.
-- The Total Divas 7-on-7 Elimination tag match was a rematch from Survivor Series.
-- Dolph Ziggler vs. Damien Sandow was a rematch from last week's Raw (side note: neither wrestler was in action at Survivor Series).
-- The Wyatt Family vs. CM Punk/Daniel Bryan was a rematch from Survivor Series, with Bray Wyatt included in the match this time.
-- The Miz vs. Kofi Kingston was a rematch from the Survivor Series Kickoff Show.
-- Xavier Woods vs. Heath Slater was the most fresh match on the show, despite R Truth and Woods facing Slater's 3MB teammates Drew McInTyre and Jinder Mahal last week on Raw.