Brock Lesnar To Kick Off Monday Night RAW

06/12/2017 03:25 pm EDT

Business will be picking up early tonight on Monday Night RAW as WWE has announced Brock Lesnar will be kicking off the 3 hour broadcast with his response to Samoa Joe's vicious attack on Paul Heyman last week.

Samoa Joe won the Fatal Five Way to become the number one contender for Lesnar's Championship at Extreme Rules. The two are set to do battle for the first time ever at WWE's Great Balls of Fire pay per view on July 9th. In many ways Joe was the last person anyone expected to be in a position to face Lesnar, but his promo and attack on Heyman last week changed everyone's minds.

This will be the first appearance of Brock Lesnar since the Raw after WrestleMania where he showed up to basically let the WWE Universe know he'd be taking the Universal Championship hostage for a few months.

Also announced for tonight's show is a huge Tag Team Championship rematch between The Bar (Sheamus and Cesaro) and The Hardy Boyz. The Hardy's were absent last week as Matt was celebrating the birth of his second child. The Bar (hey, they keep calling themselves that, so I will too) defeated The Hardys for the Championships at WWE Extreme Rules.

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WWE is also advertising further development on the Enzo and Cass attacker situation as well Nia Jax's pursuit of Alexa Bliss' WWE Women's Championship and Bray Wyatt's target on the Kingslayer, Seth Rollins.

It's likely WWE is getting Lesnar out of the way early due to the fact that they are up against game 5 of the NBA finals which kicks off 30 minutes after Raw. WWE has been getting crushed in the ratings lately and tonight should be no different. Luckily for them, there is no competition threatening their place as the leader in sports entertainment. However, when their cable deal is up in 2019, we could see an entirely different wrestling landscape if the WWE's decline continues.

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