I got an email last week from a reader and he told me that one of the sites that I post for has a forum and in this forum many are DEMANDING that I get fired. The reason? Because they say all I do is complain about Raw. They have had it with me. Well after reading this, if they read this, I’m afraid they are going to demand my head. Well here it goes. I was there live last night with my son Jason. I have gone to every Raw that comes here for over 9 years at the All State arena. I have seen the greatest shows and some that were fair, but last night’s show was one of the worst that I have ever attended. Listen I had the greatest seats, and I could not wait to go, but after the show my son said he can’t see going to another one, and I guess I will think twice before I decide to go in January when Raw returns.
For the most part Raw has always been major when it comes to Chicago, but last night the first hour felt like we were watching a house show. With the exception of Chris Jericho hitting a homerun with that outstanding promo, the first hour was just a disaster. You know many of us complain if there’s too much mic work, but in that first hour again with the exception of Jericho, all we got was one crap match after another. Let’s see Batista the man that beat John Cena the night before at Summer Slam came out, does no mic work, and has a squash match against Paul Burchill. This was ridiculous. You would think they would have had Batista speak and not take out a guy like Burchill so damn fast. Oh and then we get his half ass introduction to Primo Colon, you know the brother of a guy who is probably on his way out, Carlito. So Adamle gives us a two second introduction and then abruptly leaves Primo to go and talk to Cena. Now I will be quite honest with you I couldn’t hear one thing that Adamle said to Cena, and I had no idea what Cena and Batista had to say to each other because it was noisy in the arena. But I did read the results and it sounded like Dave and Cena came off well.
I did like the women’s match with Mickie and Kelly Kelly vs. Katie Lea and Jillian. Again I missed what Jillian had to say and I could not hear her “sing” because the PA system has always been bad there, but the match worked for me and at least it was one bright spot after so much garbage. Okay so we then get JBL the guy that lost to CM Punk in another squash against Jamie Noble. Now as many of you know JBL can get to me but this was one time when I was hoping that he would cut a promo bashing Punk and anything else he wanted too. But all we got was poor Jamie Noble getting the hell beaten out of him. As I said the longer this went on the more the house show feeling kept hitting me. Yeah things are not going well at all, I am thinking is this really Raw? There doesn’t seem to be any progression with the feuds except with Jericho and Michaels, and all we seem to be getting are matches that really have no reason to be made. It was like Vince and his wonderful creative staff said, “Well we were just too tired to write anything, because we stayed up late after Summer Slam. So let’s just put Raw on tonight and make meaningless matches and hopefully our fans won’t notice.”
I have to give it to the crowd and not just because I was there but they were into the show no matter how lame things were, this was one hot crowd and this hot crowd that is so anti John Cena most of the time seemed to have changed since the last time I was at Raw. Sure there were anti Cena chants, hell I took part in them, but the majority of the fans really seemed to be behind him. And now I want all you Cena fans to sit down before you keep reading. Are you sitting? Okay.
As I said the first hour was a dud, but it was the match with John Cena vs. Ted DiBiase, and Cody Rhodes that turned the show around for me. I thought this was a super match, and no matter how many on the net are bitching about Cena beating these two I have to say his victory didn’t bother me at all. I’m reading a lot of complaints that Cena single handily killed this tag team. That he no sold and came back like a super hero. Well I’ve said that for a long time that Cena is SuperCena, because he always seems to come back and come back unhurt. But last night I thought he did an excellent job and sold just fine. Okay sure he came back and got the victory, but come on, did you guys think he was going to lose? I sure didn’t and Cena isn’t the only one to come out on top when it comes to handicap matches. We have seen Cena and HBK tdo that, Triple H has had many victories and so have many other top guys. I had ABSOLUTELY had no problem with the out come of the match and not only did I think Cena did a good job, but Rhodes and DiBiase also came off well, with DiBiase even looking better than Rhodes. This was the match that I needed and I think a lot of us needed because it was downhill before this one.
I was really looking forward to seeing Shawn Michaels, but of course he wasn’t there live. However I loved his Summer Slam backstage interview with his wife, Rebecca standing right there with him and showing off that fat lip she received from Chris Jericho the night before. Speaking of the night before I have to tell you I loved Summer Slam and Undertaker and Edge did just what I thought they would do, they ROCKED IT. My hat goes off to Taker for really bumping his ass off at his age, and Edge was fantastic as well. Triple H and Khali came off so much better than I expected. It might not have been the match of the night but it was entertaining and H made Khali look fairly decent in the ring. My favorite non-wrestling segment was HBK/Rebecca and Jericho. My God what a fantastic segment this was, and all three were just excellent, they did just what needed to be done to make this very hot feud even hotter. So back to last night’s HBK interview. I again couldn’t hear it all but the little that I did hear and just watching Shawn and his wife was enough for me to know that this is without a doubt the best angle on Raw.
Santino and Beth Phoenix were next up, and Marella got the place going. You guys didn’t get to hear Santino take credit for his IC victory, but the funniest part was when he said something about it’s nice to be in St. Louis. The guy had everyone laughing and booing. His match against D’Lo was just too quick for me, and I was surprised that the crowd didn’t pop loud for hometown guy, Brown; I expected some loud chants for him. All in all this was okay but again it just was another match that was over way too soon. By the way Kofi Kingston got a very nice reaction when he came out. Kane’s promo was funnier than it should have been. As soon as we saw him on the screen we could see something was on his tooth. I told my son he has broccoli caught in there and that was it I couldn’t stop laughing. I guess he beat Rey Mysterio up because he doesn’t like him. I don’t know the food on the tooth was all I could concentrate on. I did like Batista coming out and going after Kane that was something, but I need to see more with Kane and clean teeth to see if I’m buying into the Rey angle.
The main event was awesome, Finally OUR hometown boy, Punk had a 5 star match against Jericho. This was excellent and of course the crowd couldn’t get enough of it. I’m not so sure I get or even liked Punk losing in front of the hometown, okay I didn’t like it but all in all he looked excellent against Jericho and along with Jericho’s opening promo, HBK’s interview, and Cena’s match, thankfully we did have a few highlights. Now after Raw ended, JBL came out and this time cut a short but sweet promo, bashing the Cubs, and Punk. This is what JBL should have done earlier in the show. But he didn’t and it worked just as well for all of us. Punk vs. JBL for the title then got started and it went on I would say for almost 10 minutes with Punk winning and everyone going crazy. We stayed for a few more minutes and watched Punk run around the ring then get on his knees and interact with the fans. We left but then today I read that CM had a few words to say and I sure wish we would have stayed. You can go to some of the sites to read what he had to say. I’ll tell you it’s really special when you have a World Champion from your area, it just makes him seem like a true super star.
So it wasn’t the best night but as I said there were some highlights and we did get two dark matches before Raw. One was with poor underutilized Charlie Haas losing to I think his name is Morishima. And then we saw William Regal losing to a local guy. Regal got a lot of heat and he played off the crowd well. As I said earlier, I think we were a very hot crowd and I recorded the show on my DVR, but it didn’t record so I have no idea how we came off on TV. But that crowd had me going and as much as I’m bitching here, it’s always nice to spend time with my son so I guess last night wasn’t a total loss. By the way I’m not so sure how I feel about that Championship Scramble Match at Unforgiven. I really don’t see why JBL and Kane are in there, yet it could be interesting so I guess I have to keep an open mind about this for now.
I will hopefully return over the weekend with my Smackdown thoughts and I’m very anxious to watch ECW tonight. Oh wow a rematch with Mark Henry vs. Matt Hardy. I certainly wouldn’t call that thing they had at Summer Slam a match, but hey that’s me. 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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