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Fairly obvious spoiler stuff ahead.

Happy birthday JMS. Don’t click the link if you worried about RAW being spoiled.

Edit: Perhaps I have no idea what I’m talking about.

–HHH will not be wrestling Chris Benoit at SummerSlam. – WO.com, 7/23 update.

This seems like it has a pretty simple hidden meaning, but let’s roll out the possiblites just to make sure the logic’s sound.

Possible reason HHH would not be wrestling Chris Benoit SummerSlam

HHH is hurt. You’d think Dave would’ve brought that up if it was true.

There are no (longer) plans to have HHH win the title in the near future. Again, you’d think Dave would’ve added more info or phrased the whole thing differently, since this would be a far bigger story than no Benoit/HHH at SummerSlam.

The title’s still going to HHH eventually, but for whatever reason (movie?), it’s not going to be at SummerSlam. This is a possiblity, but lacks the additional evidence for anyone to believe – who’d be the challenger if not HHH? Orton? Even though I think he needs a title match as a heel before he turns, taking another important loss hurts his cred, especially if he’s not turning face for a while longer. The window’s passed on Eugene. Not Kane again, and Shawn will be busy with him whenever he returns. It’d be an arbupt shift to put Edge in that role. And no one else would make it a SummerSlam worthy main event.

If there was a backstory and other information to explain why WWE would prefer doing Edge vs Benoit or Orton vs Benoit, I might be presuading. It’s a lot more in the What If territory.

It’s not HHH who won’t be in the title match, it’s Benoit. The Iron Man match is the oppurtinty for a switch, and Edge’s already being set up as an Triple H opponent. Triple H would like enjoy being known as someone who excels in 60 minute matches, and by winning on Monday, he’d be 2-0.

It’s 95% likely that last reason is the correct reason Dave said what he’d said. Which annoys me, because although he attempted to phrase his information so it wasn’t a spoiler, I just didn’t conduct brain surgery here to figure out what he meant. Either he did a bad job or a dumb job, I’m not sure.

I was kinda wondering how they were going to get another match out of this feud after the Iron Man match, and I guess that takes care of that. Hope Benoit gets to do something intersting after this. I’m sure they’ll set that up with the finish.

Flair/Edge as the last match on the show? Maybe they need to stretch out Edge’s chase one extra week. It’s gonna be an odd piece of business, with Edge talking about how he beat Orton and Batista and Orton and Flair and he’s going to finish them off by beating Triple H, and then he just doesn’t. And then what?

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Edit: Look at that! All that so so wrong. “Either he did a bad job or a dumb job”, perhaps I should be talking about me there.

Anyway, going on third or fourth hand information, your SummerSlam card looks like

Orton vs Benoit (c) – Orton wins the title
Triple H vs Edge or Eugene

WM: Triple H vs Orton (c)

I think it would be better for Orton to wait to WM and have him be the one winning the title there, but I don’t know that this won’t be better. It seems too soon but I guess we’ll see.

Possible Orton opponents?
Edge definitely
Benoit probably

Uh, Eugene? probably not
Flair would kinda be interesting.
Shawn? Sure.

The one thing that worries me is people are already cheering Orton in limited amounts, and a title win would only increase the reaction. They’re going to need him to do some hatable things quick unless they want the crowd to make up their minds for them.