I am at a loss for words. I don’t know how to describe last night’s Raw. For the most part I did like it but it was a weird show, well I guess I just described it. Raw was odd yet in many ways entertaining. Hell the MSG crowd performed better than a couple of the segments on the show. I find myself still laughing because of the way the show came off last night. So let me get into that right now.
Raw started off with a very nervous JR and Eric Bischoff having a short talk about JR’s match later in the show against Triple H. And even though Eric could have stopped the match before it happened he seemed to be thriving on seeing a shaken up JR in front of him. Bisch made the match a NO DQ match, and that JR could have somebody in his corner, since Ric Flair would be there with Hunter. And that somebody would be Dave Batista. See Eric isn’t such a bad guy now is he? So that’s what we have to look forward too, a NO DQ match with Batista out there for JR and Flair for Hunter. While adding Dave made JR grin a teeny bit trust me the guy was still not exactly doing cartwheels about having to go through the match.
The first match was with Chris Benoit vs. Edge The Briefcase man. Now this had definite possibilities, the down part was taking it backstage. It was clear that there wasn’t to be a winner during this match, so the guys ended up backstage going after each other and finally being pulled off on one another by whoever was available. This all caused Eric to again make a decision and that decision was, The Last Man Standing Match at Backlash, Edge vs. Chris Benoit. Now you know that should be a match to watch. So as I said this had the makings of being another top match but taking it out of the ring kind of killed the momentum. However, this is when the MSG fans started to join in. And by that I am talking about the start of the We Want Matt chants. Yeah I heard them and although the chants weren’t over powering this was just the warm up for what was to come when Lita was next to show up.
Trish came out and I guess because Kane was after her last week, she was in a panic mode and wanted to clear the air with Lita. After a little coaxing Lita came out and the MSG fans came alive. The You Screwed Matt chants started ringing out, and then the ever so famous “slut” chants really poured out. During all of this Trish did a damn good job trying to take all of the heat and make it look like it was meant for her. Trish seemed poised the whole time this was going on, and Lita seemed at least on the outside to be totally cool and unbothered by the fans not letting up on her. This segment was so appealing to me because it reminded me how the fans were at last years Wrestlemania during the Brock Lesnar/Goldberg match The crowd got to them especially Brock so badly that he left by giving them the finger. So this was one of my favorite segments of the night. I looked at my husband and told him I’ll bet you anything that Vince put Lita out there knowing that she would get what she got, maybe a little bit of a punishment for her. I’ll tell you I have a feeling this is just the beginning now, and Lita is going to have turn heel because as soon as she came out the boos were extremely loud.
Okay so if I can get back to Trish trying to make nice with Lita, and Lita not buying into a word that came out of Trish’s mouth, Kane came out and Trish immediately ran. So just as Kane is about to choke slam Trish someone comes out to save her. And that someone is VISCERA. As soon as he came out the place went silent, but not for long, those clever MSG fans came back with Let’s Go Mabel, yeah the fans last night were off the charts with their humor and also there animosity. So Vis came out and attacked Kane. Poor Kane, again he’s got nothing to work with. I was so disappointed. However I will say Vis coming on to Trish and Trish’s reaction had me laughing. I would love to think this was a one time thing, but it’s not and Kane vs. Viscera is not my idea of a feud. Dear God please draft Kane to Smackdown. And speaking of the draft that will come up in a little bit.
I didn’t know that Billy and Chuck had kids. Hey I didn’t get the whole Heart Throbs gimmick. It’s a junior version of Billy and Chucky. They come off like air heads. Now I will say they can wrestle, but I really believe this gimmick will kill them before they even get a chance to show what they can do. The best part of watching the Heart Throbs taking on William Regal and Tajiri were Regal’s and Tajiri’s expressions. It was so funny watching them checking out Romeo and Antonio. I will not write the Heart Throbs off yet, but as I said I can’t see this gimmick getting over at all, but we will see. Shawn Michaels vs. Hassan was a much better match then their first encounter. I really was into this one, Shawn this time gave Hassan a lot to work with. And even though we all knew that Shawn would get doubled team and Hulk Hogan would be there to pick up the pieces. It still worked, the crowd went totally nuts and after sitting through a Smackdown taping and Viscera I think they got rewarded very well. Hogan is as slow as molasses in the ring, I’m hoping at Backlash he’s hardly wrestling, HBK really needs to dominate the match, with Hogan coming in for a few short minutes. But I am looking forward to the pay per view match and I really liked the way it was played out last night.
It’s official Chris Masters has become the John Heidenreich of Raw. The gimmick is so bad so boring that now I’m cringing every time he comes out. Didn’t he challenge the guys in the back last week to try to break his Masterlock? After all he was going to pay them a thousand dollars if they could do that. But instead it’s another week of jobbers, this time he’s offering the money to someone in the audience. I hated this segment more than any other segment on the show. So I will go right to another sub par segment. After Masters they come up with Simon Dean, and I’m thinking oh my God what the hell is going on? Thankfully Shelton Benjamin came out and now it’s Dean vs. Benjamin. The only thing that didn’t work was Chris Jericho’s appearance. He came out to bug the crap out of Shelton. Jericho has a song to sing and this song is so important that he has his guitarist from Fozzy accompany him. Let me tell you this was BAD. I don’t know who came up with this idea, Jericho was singing about Shelton being a little bitch. Please this was so bad that I can’t believe that anyone would find this amusing let alone entertaining. So it’s Jericho vs. Shelton for the IC title at Backlash. I’m sure we will see a terrific match, and I’m even surer that Jericho won’t be singing, so that’s something to look forward too. Now back to the match which wasn’t bad. We all know Dean formerly known as Nova in the ECW has it it’s just too bad that Vince doesn’t know that. I say give him guys like Shelton and let him do his thing in the ring. Shelton won and Jericho applauded in that Triple H sarcastic way and that was it. So who is the heel Jericho or Shelton? Right now it’s anyone’s guess.
One of the best parts of the show was having Christian and Vince McMahon interact. This showed just how relaxed and natural Christian is on the mic. Vince was good, but he always is when he shows up after a long absence away from TV. And Christian was GOLD! I enjoyed this so much, and I was so thrilled to hear about the draft in a month. Vince is right it’s time for a shakeup and as I said the first thing that I would do is move Kane from Raw and send him to Smackdown so he could get a few good feuds in. This was my highlight of the night, of course the fans getting on Lita rates right up there too, but Vince and Christian were fantastic last night. Now when did Hunter’s pedigree become lethal? Last week I found Hunter’s promo on that subject to be very lame and Hunter talking about it more last night still came off silly. No matter how much emphasis Hunter put on that pedigree it just doesn’t work for me. By the way earlier in the show Hunter and Ric had one of their little talks and Hunter informed Ric that Batista would not make it to Raw. See Hunter talked to the limo company and fixed it so Batista wouldn’t make it to the show. So all of us immediately knew that Batista would show up, too bad JR didn’t know that.
This main event definitely was a crowd killer. I will admit I had no problem with the beating that Hunter gave JR, but in all honesty it went on way too long and it wasn’t exactly something I would book as the main event. The whole time JR is bleeding heavily and Lawler is complaining to Coach about the torture JR is going through, I’m wondering why the hell doesn’t Lawler get in there and help out his buddy. Well after many minutes went buy Lawler did just that and of course Hunter and Flair took care of him too. But surprise Batista made it just in time and took care of Hunter. I did like the exchange that Hunter and Batista had, and I was thrilled that Hunter didn’t leave as soon as Batista hit the ring. Triple H got the worst of it ending with a chair shot to the head, and it was a smiling Dave that dragged JR’s body on top of Hunter giving JR the win. Yes it was a silly main event, okay a kind of worthless main event. But it’s over with
and next week in England it’s Christian vs. Batista; this is a match I can’t wait to see. I’m hoping it will be a match that’s not rushed and hopefully Batista and Christian will have excellent chemistry in the ring.
There you go. I was able to throw out all my feelings about a very different type of Raw. It wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. Okay the Raw and Smackdown crew will be in Europe this week and Raw will be taped in Birmingham, England, and we all know that the last time Raw was in England it RULED! So hopefully that will happen again. I will be back Friday with my Smackdown thoughts; could that show be as freaky as Raw was? I can’t wait to find out.
Email lindarobin3@yahoo.com
