Yo. You are once again reading News and Analysis for which I thank you. With last week’s report being more of a news update, plenty of thoughts to give you today.
WWE presented RAW this past Monday and the show had its highs and lows, as lately the guys working Mondays haven’t been able to build a trend on that show. Some interesting developments saw Kevin Nash make his return to the WWE. Elsewhere, Bill Goldberg and The Rock continued to be the biggest draw for RAW and had another “confrontation.” Rock was also busy putting Jeff Hardy over in a match which Jeff ended up losing. The main event saw Nash’s return as mentioned above, but the match itself was pretty good as Chris Jericho and Triple H were defeated by Booker T and Shawn Michaels. RVD and Kane weren’t left alone as Chief Morley had planned their nights as well. If my short recap doesn’t do it for you, you can always check out our RAW Report. (I even gave you the link, I mean, come on!) RAW’s rating is in and things aren’t exactly pretty. The show scored a 3.5 rating which is down from last week’s 3.7 and a bit lower from what you’d expect. The number came off of hours 3.3 and 3.7, with Goldberg and Rock drawing the highest-rated quarter for the show around the 10:00 PM time slot. That also included the Jeff Hardy vs. Rock match. The quarter drew an overall of 4.0 if you were interested.
Kevin Nash is back and obviously that was the big story on RAW. Now whether Diesel is back remains to be seen. Nash returned to his old Diesel music and did do several of Diesel’s gestures, but he was referred to, both by the commentators and in his video entrance, as Kevin Nash. The word had it that Vince and Co. scratched the Diesel return at the last minute as rumors were already out on-line that Nash will return as his old WWF character. Everyone expected Kevin to be in a storyline involving either one of Shawn Michaels or Triple H, if not both, and that seems to be a lock now. Nash is back as a face, which was also expected, as the fans always seem to have a positive reaction to him and WWE was just about to capitalize on that before his unfortunate injury. Bottom line is, Kevin Nash is back, and from what Internet sites have been saying, it looks like we’ll see a 6-Man Tag Match at Backlash which will pin the team of Triple H, Ric Flair, and Chris Jericho against the team of Shawn Michaels, Kevin Nash, and Booker T. Sounds like a good idea to me, as the main focus on RAW for the next month will be on Goldberg and Rock.
Speaking of these two, they continued their program on RAW as well. I definitely like the way WWE is working with Goldberg so far, and the feud with Rock is a draw and has been working. Of course, this also has a lot to do with Rock’s unbelievable entertaining skills. The man keeps on amazing me with every other show, and I feel as if we’re back in time again as the feeling I get from his promos is the exact same one I used to get when he was slowly turning face and becoming big in the end of ’99 and early ’00. It’s just amazing work. I don’t know if Rock will be able to stay beyond Backlash, but the original plan was for both Rock and Goldberg to get a win over each other before Rock leaves. If he’s able to stick around for a month only, I would tend to guess that Goldberg will get the win here and Rock will seek revenge upon a return in the future. As far as Rock’s future goes, he’s expected to be back in WWE either at the end of 2003, or in early 2004. Take this for what it’s worth.
The Dudley Boyz continue to play a weird role on RAW, as they are a part of the Bischoff Administration, and very reluctantly do the job for Chief Morley, whatever it is. This past week it was a handicap match against Kane. At the same time, Chief Morley, with the help of Lance Storm, defeated Rob Van Dam. I don’t know about you, but I’ve enjoyed this storyline. A strong reason I have is that it has had very solid wrestling since its beginning and that’s always nice. All the guys involved are veterans and not new faces to the squared circle and that has shown many times. This storyline keeps the tag team belts fresh, but more teams need to get involved in the lower card for it to work. We’ll see how this progresses, and ultimately I’d look for the Dudleyz to finally be granted the tag titles. As good as the storyline is, I feel that they lost some of the legit pops the Dudleyz were getting as faces when they were reunited. WWE needs to pick it up there.
In other one-sentence RAW thoughts… Don’t know what the deal with J.R. is. Word has it he’ll be returning alongside Steve Austin in some type of a package deal. The rumor still is that Steve will return with a GM type of role and he’ll rehire J.R. Time will tell… Trish Stratus continues to impress with her work. The women’s division is also going great… Not sure if Jazz’s commitment with Teddy Long and Rodney Mack will do much for her, but at least she’s with her husband on TV as well, now… Scott Steiner still gets huge pops and I do agree with many when they say that he deserves a much bigger feud than one with Christopher Nowinski… It’s nice to see Hurricane get elevated and pushed through the sky. He does have a lot of skills, but the fact remains that he’s a cruiserweight… Jeff Hardy is smooth, but needs to change his paints, it’s getting old… I’ll talk about the two “Frenchmen” soon, so stay tuned.
With the thoughts part out of this report, let’s focus on the most interesting piece of news from this week. It involved an altercation that happened backstage after RAW between Chris Jericho and Bill Goldberg. If you missed it on the newsboard for some reason, Chris Jericho and Goldberg were talking about their WCW past backstage after RAW went off the air. Eventually, fists began to fly and the two were rolling on the ground. They were separated by WWE trainers before any of the shots they threw connected. Word has it that Goldberg made a comment about Jericho being small (something he’s done in the past; as a matter of fact, in WCW Goldberg refused to work with Jericho by saying Chris is too small of a wrestler), and Y2J went to confront Bill right after RAW, as he found out about the comment through the word of mouth. When Jericho went up to Goldberg, reports state that Goldberg grabbed Chris by the throat, and then Y2J slapped his arm away. Jericho then got in a face-lock type of move and the two were on the ground. I don’t like dealing with backstage rumors like that, since nobody besides the two really knows what happened. I’ll just say that Chris Jericho hasn’t exactly been a calm guy as of lately and WWE needs to give him a big win, and give it to him soon. As far as Goldberg goes, it’s interesting to see how this will be addressed by management. Stay tuned.
I’ll be back over the weekend for your SmackDown! edition of News and Analysis. Have a good week everyone!
Thanks for reading. See Ya.
Eddie
