Hello every and happy Monday.  I hope all of you out there had a great weekend.  I enjoyed mine quite a bit whether it be all of the football yesterday, checking out DJ Chucky at LAVO NYC or finishing up moving into my new place, I really couldn’t complain.  With Monday morning comes a brand new week of goodness (one that will see my birthday take place tomorrow actually) and a pretty big week in the world of WWE.  Let’s get right into it.

The Week Ahead For WWE

Monday-  Raw emanates live from Boston, Massachusetts and it is the next step on Brock Lesnar’s Go To Hell Tour, a stop that was added last week, as Brock will likely start the build for the Hell In A Cell Match for The Undertaker and Brock Lesnar later this month.  I will say that the build for Hell In A Cell has been particularly strong this year, in my opinion.  The two cell matches, Lesnar-Taker and Reigns- Wyatt have been going on for a long period of time and it makes sense to have the culmination of each take place inside the confines of Hell In A Cell. Almost, exactly one year ago to the day, I was live at Raw at the Barclays Center as my girlfriend was nice enough to get me tickets for my birthday.  This was the night where Dean Ambrose left Raw to head to Coney Island, only to return with a hot dog stand for Seth Rollins.  It was also the night where The Rock made a surprise appearance, out of nowhere, to interrupt Lana and Rusev.  That was one of my favorite live shows I’ve seen and it’ll be interesting to see if WWE brings forth a packed show like that tonight to the, sure to be, hot crowd in Boston tonight.

Wednesday- Ever since the first NXT: Takeover Special in last February, as most of you know by now, the NXT specials on the WWE Network have been some of my favorite parts of the Network.  This week will be no exception as NXT presents NXT Takeover: Respect this Wednesday night live from Full Sail University at 8:00PM EST in Orlando, Florida.  NXT has been one of my favorite weekly shows recently as I’ve found the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Tournament to be so unique and overall, a lot of fun.  It’s going to be pretty emotional to see whoever wins the tournament be presented with the trophy by Cody and Dustin Runnels, Dusty’s sons aka Goldust and Stardust,  But that’s not all their is to look forward to at the NXT special.  The main event this Wednesday is the first NXT Special that will be main evented by women as Bayley defends the NXT Women’s title against Sasha Banks in the first ever Women’s 30-minute Ironman match.  Also really glad to see that WWE has stretched the special out to 2 and a half hours this week as it will allow every match to get the time they deserve.  As always the NXT pre show, which take place outdoors on campus and really reminds me of ESPN’s College Gameday kicks off at 7:30PM EST.  This special is the highlight of the week for me as a WWE fan.

Network Original Programming- This is another big week filled with WWE Network original programming, other than the aforementioned Takeover special, that really caught my attention.  In descending order,  have a new episode of the very underrated Table For 3 that will debut just a few hours before NXT at 4:00PM Wednesday afternoon, featuring Kevin Owens, Dean Ambrose and Cesaro.  From there, on Tuesday afternoon at 3:00PM there will be an hour long preview for NXT Takeover: Respect and then at 5:00PM it’s the return of the docuseries- “Rivalries” featuring the rivalry between Lita and Trish Stratus.  For me though, the highlight is tonight following Monday Night Raw where the 24 series returns to the WWE Network, this time looking at the NXT: Takeover special that took place in Brooklyn a few months back, from a behind the scenes perspective.  The best news is that tonight’s 24 is set to be an hour long which is great news.  While the past 24 specials were great, I always felt that 30 minutes was a bit too short.

That’s going to do it for me but obviously a big week of action this week for WWE.  We’ll have coverage of all of it starting with Raw tomorrow morning.  Until then, what are you most looking forward to seeing in the week ahead for WWE.