Of course last night’s Raw was a major step up from last week’s show. In fact the first hour was excellent. I’m happy to say there were only a few things that I didn’t like, but this show had a lot of cool segments and I’m happy that we didn’t get more of the same from last Monday’s Raw. I liked the feeling that this show had and all in all Raw came off very well. I want to touch on what I really didn’t like and then it’s on to all the positives of the show.
There were a few segments that I just didn’t like at all last night and I’ll tell you what they were out of order. As much as I love Jamie Noble’s backstage segments where he tries to turn on divas I was so disappointed that all the humor that went on with Noble and Layla meant nothing because we had to watch Noble vs. Snitzky. It’s like watching Heidenreich being shoved down our throats week after week. I have no desire what so ever to watch a match with Snitzky. I wish Vince would change his gimmick or just keep him off TV. I wasn’t crazy about the main event with JBL/Rhodes and DiBiase vs. Cena and Cryme Tyme. I thought the match was I guess average at best, I will say putting Cryme Tyme, DiBiase and Rhodes in there was an idea that I did like. But the match itself was rather dull for me. As much as I absolutely love the Jericho/Michaels angle I was left cold with Jericho taking on Paul London. Obviously the match didn’t make London look to good, but I didn’t even feel that it was a strong showing for Y2J. Plus his promo after the match was okay, but Chris has had much better promos than last night.
I complained very strongly about John Cena’s bathroom humor last week, and I was very happy to see that bathroom jokes seemed to be the thing of the past on last night’s show. I was totally open minded when Todd Grisham interviewed Cena and it all started out well, but things totally got out of hand. Cena started out really well hyping the New York City Parking Lot Brawl and then all of a sudden creative F’d him up again, and he went from talking calm and sensible to just going on and on and getting more animated about Sunday’s match. Again this didn’t do Cena any favors; there was no need for over acting at all. I was so disappointed that creative took this route with Cena. I really believe they have no idea how to present Cena. It’s like he’s either sophomoric or over dramatic there’s no in between for John Cena’s character. And if this wasn’t bad enough Raw ends on a very sour note with JBL hitting Cena with his car. The first thing I thought of when it happened was I’m watching WCW. Now don’t get me wrong WWE isn’t innocent when it comes to making fans believe that a wrestler was hit by a car or a ambulance or a van but last night JBL hitting a unconscious Cena just came off so bad, so lame. And to make things even worse, minutes after the so called hit and run, WWE tells the fans that Cena was just grazed and he will be at The Great American Bash. You talk about cheesy? They couldn’t even wait a few hours to put anything up and that just makes the company come off so badly.
I figured the reason why WWE posted something so fast was to re assure Cena’s young fans that he was fine and not dead and this way the kids will beg their parents to order the show. This ending did nothing to make me want their feud to continue let alone watch them go at it Sunday at the pay per view. So now that you know what I didn’t like, but now here’s what came off so very well.
I don’t think I have ever said this before but DAMN I love the angle with Kane. Is it possible that he had his mask in that bag? Finally they are doing something so right with his character. I hope this time they don’t drop the ball, because this is really something to sink your teeth in. I loved his hysterical apology to Michael Cole and The King and I thought Kane and Punk had a very good match. Anything dealing with Kane last night was GOLD. As I said the match with Punk vs. Kane was very good and I just wish Raw were more Punk and less JBL. Just like with Kane anything dealing with CM came off very well. It was cool to see Batista run in to save Punk from Kane breaking Punk’s neck with a chair. What made the Batista run in even better was that when Punk wanted to shake Batista’s hand, Batista made it clear to Punk that he wasn’t his friend and then CM took a Batista Spinebuster. All of this was one hell of a good segment.
I have to give it to Cody Rhodes and Ted DiBiase. They each did a nice job on the mic making an absolute nothing out of Hacksaw Duggan. I liked this so much because it was a great segment to showcase the new kids on the block and they put Hacksaw down so badly he really looked like he was going to cry. Props to the new tag team champs. Katie Lea vs. Mickie James was a pleasure to watch. Both of these women looked really good in the ring and I also liked the match that immediately followed, Kofi Kingston vs. Paul Burchill. I think Kingston and Burchill worked well with each other, there was definitely chemistry there and maybe Burchill will now be a part of a feud before Vince pulls the plug on it too fast. Now I know a few fans had a major problem with Santino jobbing to Beth Phoenix. I’m not one of those fans. Look, Santino shines on the mic, it’s not his wrestling that makes the fans want to see more. For the most part Santino brings humor to the shows, and he did challenge anyone in the back to take him on. The challenger happened to be Beth Phoenix, but because Santino is the comic I didn’t see a thing wrong putting her in the match and having her beat him. This match definitely reminded me of the days when Chyna used to take on men. I thought Phoenix held her own against Marella, and I liked what we got.
And finally and no I didn’t forget to mention Raw’s opener. Last night Stephanie and Shane begged the superstars to come together and stop the madness. I didn’t mind the McMahon’s because they were on just for a few minutes. And as soon as Steph and Shane were off the camera’s immediately followed a major brawl between Shawn Michaels and Chris Jericho. I really liked how we got the brawl already in progress. This interaction between Jericho and HBK was better than the Jericho promo later in the show. I will say this, I wasn’t that into Jericho’s promo but I thought Shawn Michaels was absolutely awesome after the London/Jericho match. He showed just how FED UP he was with Jericho and Michaels didn’t even have to speak, his facial expressions put over Shawn’s anger. Oh you can bet this is one match that I am looking forward to watching on Sunday.
So there was a lot of good things going on last night and as I’m writing this I have ECW on and I would like to be watching it but I’m just kind of glancing at it and it seems like a pretty good show. It’s amazing how good Mark Henry is doing as the ECW champion. I hope Smackdown is a hit this week and then we can say all three shows rocked. I will return over the weekend with my GAB predictions. I have started to get a few predictions from some of you so feel free to keep them coming. The website forum TheWrestlingAsylum.com has recently just re-opened after some severe technical difficulties. If you’ve ever wanted to join an online community and be part of a wrestling forum, now’s the time to jump in. TWA is an acclaimed wrestling forum that has some of the best wrestling discussions out there in addition to many interactive features such as our matches of the week, wrestling pool, et cetera. Currently, TWA is holding an interactive feature where members will vote on their favorite wrestlers of all time and in the end, TWA will count down the top 100. People who participate in this contest will receive a free DVD-R of some famous matches of the top 10 or 20 wrestlers on the list. In addition to all of this, TWA also has a very active Off Topic section of the site for random discussion, movies, music, graphics, and of course, TWA has an ever-growing multimedia section on all wrestling and all other media as well. TheWrestlingAsylum.com is just waiting for you to make its mark on it, so why not join up today?
Email lindarobin3@yahoo.com
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