There are times in the life of a wrestling organization’s creative staff that they have the opportunity of a lifetime and they can either score a touchdown or fumble the ball. Everyone knows that I have been hard on wrestling, particularly WWE, because they have been missing opportunities to do great things ever since the very first Survivor Series in 1987 when Bam Bam Bigelow emerged as the star of the show even in defeat and the WWF failed to push him. That said, too many gimmick matches tend to bag down a show, as evidenced by the TNA Lockdown PPV’s where there are a couple of good matches and several pointless matches between guys whose hatred for one another is not strong enough or whose story line has not progress in the direction necessary to justify a cage match. On the other hand, if done correctly, a show full of gimmick matches can actually be entertaining. Unfortunately, last night’s Raw was not.
Last Night on Raw, we saw the return, from a 5-year hiatus, of Raw Roulette. This meant that every match would be a gimmick match and the wrestlers would not know what type of match they would be competing in until the big wheel of gimmick matches was spun. Customarily, as with the first Raw Roulette or when WCW held their 1992 Halloween Havoc PPV and Sting had his match against Jake Roberts, the wrestlers spun the wheel and their fate was in their own hands. This time, the wrestlers’ fates were in the hands of Vince McMahon, who lightly spun the wheel and controlled the wrestler’s futures. Apart from the fact that the matches were poorly executed in the ring, the match choices made for less-than-stellar television.
Last night, the only people who knew in advance what type of match they would be in were William Regal, who was shamed into a match because of his failure to stroke Vince’s ego the week prior, and presumably Regal’s opponent Triple H, as their first blood match was decided at the beginning of the show and the match was held at the top of the second hour (or at the end of the first hour whether pessimist or optimist). Shawn Michaels and Kennedy came to the ring to fight each other on the heels of Kennedy’s clean victory over HBK last week only to find that they would be partners in a tag match against two other people who had never teamed together in the past (the Strange Bedfellows Match). The possibilities for this were endless, even with the very weak Raw roster. I expected a competitive match with maybe Cody Rhodes and Umaga or Jim Duggan and DH Smith. They could even have given us Snitsky and Paul London or Brian Kendrick, or if they truly wanted to play it for laughs, they could have given us Super Crazy and Ron Simmons and after the match and the Kennedy-Michaels ending, they could have interviewed Simmons and let him cut his typical one word promo. Instead, we get a comedy match with Trevor Murdoch and Charlie Haas who appears to be trying out a luchador gimmick. In what was perhaps one of Shawn Michaels’ worst matches ever, HBK gets the win only to be attacked again by Kennedy. If this is how the creative staff gets the show off to a rousing start, the outlook for the rest of the night was very bleak indeed, and WWE did not disappoint.
What followed was a Dress up Like Your Opponent match between Carlito and Hardcore Holly. Someone explain to me how you follow a comedy match with another supposed comedy match and how it helps Holly’s character to have him smiling through the entire segment. I get that there had to be a comedy match to offset the seriousness of the other matches, and that there also had to be a vehicle for Lawler’s attempts at comedy on commentary, but once Lawler saw that Carlito’s wig was no going to come off, let it go and call the match, or at least make jokes about something else in the match.
Of course, there was the obligatory women’s segment, but the sight of Vince cheating with the wheel even cheapened that segment. At least Maria got to spin the wheel for herself, but a submission match between Maria and Melina might actually have been interesting instead of a pillow fight where the other two faces throw the match so that the returning Ashley can get the victory. Why couldn’t Ashley win the match on her own? It has got to be easier than winning on Survivor (bad joke…I’m sorry).
These matches were followed by a poorly written and poorly executed First Blood match and an uneventful tag match with the Highlanders facing Hornswoggle & Mick Foley. Who actually thought that the Highlanders would win spots in the Royal Rumble? Anyway, why couldn’t they do a one day turn with the Great Khali like they did with Umaga a few months ago when he teamed with Cena for one day? Khali could team with Hornswoggle, thus defying Vince, get yelled at by Vince, be forced to face Triple H with his spot in the Rumble on the line, be brutal enough with Triple H that he regains his heel status, and have Triple H win to gain entry into the Rumble.
Sandwiched in between was the only match that actually furthered a story line. Jericho was placed in a Handicap Match with Snitsky & JBL. JBL tied Jericho up and drug him all around the arena. Jericho will emerge from this furious and demanding a receipt. This should make for an excellent match at the Royal Rumble. At least the writes got this one right.
Finally, there was the main event. I was expecting maybe a blindfold match where Jeff Hardy scores another victory over Randy Orton after Orton accidentally gives his finisher to the referee, then tries to cheat with his blindfold off as the ref lay unconscious in the ring only to have Jeff hit the Twist of Fate while still blindfolded to score the win and gain even more momentum going into their title match. That is what I expected. Instead we got a cage match between Hardy & Umaga that proved nothing more than the fact that Hardy could beat Umaga one-on-one. Having Orton on the outside of the ring trying to interfere the whole time added nothing to the match. In fact, it made the match seem more cluttered. If we were going to have the Hardy-Umaga match, then put Orton at commentary and have him attack after the match or show him at the hospital harassing Matt only to have him actually appear at the arena and attack Jeff during his victory celebration. Anything would have been better than what we got, but after all, this was the main event of an already bad show. What should we have been expecting?
Send comments, complaints or questions to me @ ericej@netzero.net
Visit my blog @ http://ericejenkins.blogspot.com/ to view more wrestling and non-wrestling writings.
Eric E. Jenkins is an author who has written a semi-biographical book covering the last 30 years in professional wrestling through the eyes of a fan entitled “Reflections of a Professional wrestling Fan: My 30 Years ‘In’ the Business”. He is currently writing “Dead Too Soon”, a book chronicling the careers of and paying tribute to many of the wrestling stars who passed away very young.
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