Would somebody please tell me how I’m supposed to be positive about a Raw like that? No seriously, I’m asking. I’d like someone who has posted a comment on a wrestling forum saying that they thought it was a good show to point out to me why I’m such a miserable git and explain to me why this week’s show was a resounding success. Because I got nothing. Well, almost nothing. It comes to something when I look through my badly scrawled notes and recall how much I enjoyed the Masterlock challenge this week. For the first time since the roster split I am severely tempted to suggest that Smackdown is the more rewarding WWE show right now. Raw has the better mid-card and main event scene, gained more than it lost in the draft lottery and the trades and surely benefits from the closer artistic scrutiny of the two shows seeing as it is the flagship live television broadcast. So why is it that someone has not only taken their eye off the ball but also dropped it, accidentally kicked it under the wheels of a truck and watched it pop like one of Sable’s implants?
Now I’ve got more faith in Cena than a lot of people, especially amongst those who aren’t impressed with his recent efforts, but I find it so hard to figure out what the WWE is trying to do with him. He can’t be a soft, corporate hand-shaker and an uncontrollable loose cannon at the same time because the two are diametrically opposed and he ends up being neither. He becomes a hybrid bastard attached to neither root, too pampered to preach to his own flock and too disgusted at his own forced-smile photographs with eager fans. I personally don’t mind the cheesy, response-inducing vocals but when in the same breath he talks about “real recognising real” I feel like he’s reading it from ‘Thuganomics for dummies’. The Raw writers should stop trying to cover all the bases as they’re spreading the gimmick so thin that it might break and concentrate on the direction that they feel gives Cena the best mileage for the next five years. If Cena is the man (and I’m not saying he isn’t) then it’s way too desperate to be playing him off against the ‘boss’ this early in his main event career when Jericho is dressed and ready at ringside, reduced to gesticulations and facial expressions in his own championship feud. Is the WWE ‘ideas’ machine so fragile that it can’t start a worthwhile feud on Raw until the Smackdown PPV has occurred just in case it’s a distraction? I wouldn’t even mind the ‘battle of the bands’ next week if I felt confident it would lead to a confrontation of some sort. Maybe a head rammed into a speaker or an aggressively placed drum over someone’s head? But more than likely it will be a way to keep them apart rather than bring them together and, once the novelty of them locking up at Summerslam has worn off after about two minutes, we’ll be left with the feeling that this can’t be that important or they would have wound eachother up more in the build up to the match.
And we now sit in the shadows of Kane and Edge’s third main event match in as many weeks. I’m not against the fundamental premise of running a series of matches between two wrestlers, especially taking into account the varied stipulations they’re now employing, but it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Firstly, Matt Hardy runs in PRIOR to the cage match on Raw, thus prematurely ejaculating the primary reason why this drawn out feud is continuing, and killing most of the fan interest in any possible outcome. Not for the first time in the last few months, Kane finds himself Edge’s surrogate opponent, redundant within his own feud to the point of invisibility. How exactly is Kane making Lita’s life a “living hell”? The “monster is back” and yet he lies dispirited on the canvas at a loss? Lita must have Kane’s gonads safely locked away in a jar somewhere because he is as demonic and driven right now as Eugene’s dopier brother, Neville. Once again, the writing is to blame. Because creative couldn’t wait to bring Hardy back or cut Kane loose from this feud, Kane can’t get revenge on Lita or Edge because then we’d have no need for Matt to do the same. The last thing they want to do is rally any sympathy for Edge and Lita because that would destroy the one motivational tool they’ve got at their disposal and, with all real events that become storylines, once the work replaces the shoot then it’s business as usual and I don’t see Matt/Edge pushing this feud up the card based solely on workrate.
Before I get to the matches, a few smaller issues. For the first time to date, Maria’s ‘dumb question’ spot didn’t come off. Shame, it was working too. But if it continues to be four hits for every one miss then I can live with that. Exactly how is Snitsky (a man with a worse record than Fozzy) supposed to strike fear in the heart of the WWE Champion? Bischoff’s attempts to make it sound as impressive as it would be with Undertaker or Big Show seemed quite comical. The Diva Search ended at the eight-minute mark this week, just enough time for me to make a paper plane (which failed to fly) and throw out some old books (which also failed to fly). Not that they were high to start with, but expectation levels hit the floor faster than Torrie’s undies when Lillian announced the Masterlock challenge was back. Rosey was allowed to put up less of a fight than Val Venis (which seems odd) but Masters made a sharp exit when Big Show invited him to sniff his back. On a more worrying note, I found the Kerwin/Chavo segment to be entertaining and I now hope to see more of ‘Mini-Bisch’ over the next few weeks. Matt Striker got his third crack at Kurt Angle (the same number as Sharmell) but for some reason the Invitational match was merely used as a reinforcement of Kurt’s superiority and not as a ‘Horrowitz’ style push for the talented hopeful. For those of you keeping score at home, five weeks until Summerslam and still no sign of a feud for Kurt Angle. I dare say he’ll get one, but the opportunities for it to be as good as the Angle/HBK feud are ticking by at an alarming rate.
I hope that Shelton Benjamin isn’t developing a case of the wrestling yips. Like a golfer who can’t putt or a darts player who can’t release the dart smoothly, Shelton seems to be psychologically dismantling his confidence when performing high-risk manoeuvres. I don’t think it’s as simple as not having the belief in his own abilities but I would surmise that he is over-thinking it and possibly trying to perform the moves carefully, a contradiction in terms with high-risk offence. As I said earlier, I’m not against a series of matches between two opponents as long as there is some sort of progression of either style or storyline but the slow-burn idea of each match stipulation trying to prevent the way Carlito escaped the previous contest is a mono-tone process and looks unlikely to carry them to a satisfactory ‘winner takes all’ match at Summerslam. I think both Carlito and Benjamin are a big part of the future of the WWE and it is wise to let them begin building some chapters to their story. I’d just prefer it if it worked in the immediacy as well as the long term.
Kane and Edge assembled a decent cage match. Cage matches have recently taken on the same mantle as ‘Hell in a cell’ encounters and now appear a slight disappointment if nothing cruel or unusual happens. Kane’s blood made it more visually appealing and some of the mesh spots were visceral enough to have impact but the match and the outcome fell flat. But this is surely what the WWE expected after pushing Matt Hardy so hard over the last few weeks instead of working the feud between Kane and Edge.
Cena and Snitsky’s lumberjack match was never going to challenge Orton/Christian or HBK/Benjamin for Raw match of the year, and it didn’t. If Vince is asking us to accept this badly prepared mediocrity as a ‘main event’ then he needs to take a good long look at his product and decide if he really has the best interest of the fans at heart. I know that if the majority of fans were in charge they would blow every dream and PPV quality match by sticking them on Raw within the first few weeks of being at the helm but that doesn’t mean protecting the investment to the point of suppression. I’ve never been in favour of the ‘hand-picked’ lumberjack angle because it’s a bit predictable and Cena is nowhere near as over as Austin was when he used the same construct successfully but the ‘good guys’ rushing to Cena’s rescue towards the end made it just about worthwhile.
So come on then, let’s hear it. “You’re too negative”, “don’t criticise if you couldn’t do any better”, “if you don’t like it then stop watching”. You’re damn right I’m negative. I’m not going to stop watching the WWE because I love it and I feel like I have a darn sight more respect for the product than the current Raw creative team. I’m not a wannabe booker or wrestler but I have a unique perspective on the WWE because I’m a fan, just like the rest of you, and I hate to see the craft being neglected. This isn’t about this wrestler or that wrestler, these guys are busting their asses day in and day out, but it’s not enough to make a good show out of bad writing.
Shame, I’ve got such a lovely smile too.
Lee
