It’s been a while since I’ve written a Raw review. I need to reacquaint myself with the sort of wrestling-orientated WWE broadcasts on offer ... live sex, worms, moles, lesbians, midgets, death ... yep, it’s all coming back to me now. Shall we?
It wasn’t a major issue but did anyone notice that Maria announced Edge out of character? Anyway, no explanation was offered for last week’s twist involving Lita, the belt and Edge’s elongated bonce so we just smile and continue on as if nothing happened. Edge came out to challenge Cena for Raw next week and as usual Lita seems obsessed with looking down to make sure her breasts are still in her top (a problem that could be better solved with a nice sweater). When the subject of a guest referee was mentioned the dulcet tones of Hacksaw Jim Duggan reverberated around the arena and he stormed his way to the ring like a bearded moron. Sorry, I was going to say he IS a bearded moron and then compare him to something else but it just seemed so damn appropriate. Oddly, I hated Duggan back in 1993 at the tail end of his WWF career but only because people had to wrestle him. Now I don’t mind him so much because 364 of my days per year are Duggan-less. To cut a long story short ... the end. If you can’t guess what sporadically happened during the next two hours then you haven’t been paying much attention to WWE programming. It was tv wrestling by numbers. Which is probably why it worked so well. With no work/shoot crap or dead wrestlers to berate it came across as simple, 123 booking with a nice story and a good finish. Just to annoy all you anti-Cena guys out there, I thought Cena’s opening punches were sharp and his general speed was good throughout. Does that mean I like him as champ? Let’s not get carried away here. I’m not going to mention the ‘snog’ because I’m far too journalistically pure to stoop that low. And anyway, I thought you guys would be glad for a bit of HLA when Maria kissed the twat.
Tournament anyone? I guess we must be watching a show from the brand that lost the Royal Rumble otherwise they wouldn’t need to be finding a number one contender with such haste.
Kane and Chris Masters assembled a match which covered the full alphabet of wrestling moves from ‘A’ to ‘slightly after A’. I find it a disappointment that two such powerful guys can’t make up for their lack of technical knowledge with stiff brawling but they had all the physicality of men keeping their distance from eachother for fear of catching something contagious like flu or homosexuality. Masters and (especially) Kane require the style of opponent who will run and bounce for them and, with both wrestlers having neither of these attributes, it lacked more than it contained. At least the result went the right way and the mostly slow Masters advances in the tournament at the expense of the very slow Kane. The main difference between the two being that Masters will get better with experience. Kane is done.
In the second tournament encounter HHH and Ric Flair showed that you can’t blame a bad match on not enough time or the restraints of television, by assembling a solid bout using only the remnants of what feud they had some months ago. They also showed that you don’t need a cage or a sledgehammer to tell an interesting story and both men seemed to take great care in putting the other over to the best of their abilities. On the strength of this performance I feel that the time is right to re-elevate Hunter to the belt but only if some changes are made to the way both his and Cena’s recent feuds have been run. HHH needs to change the record. If another title reign means going back to long, onanistic promos about how great he is then the cost at an entertainment level won’t be enough to justify putting a proper wrestler back at the top. Whatever it might be, the writers need to come up with something new for HHH and he has to agree to it. Otherwise it’ll just be another run closer to beating Flair’s sixteen times and little else. Equally, Cena has to change. The type of gimmick he’s been running with Edge, and moreover with Jericho and then Angle previously, will not work in opposition to HHH and will only serve to ruin both wrestler’s impending meeting in the main event circle. They can’t dumb down Hunter just so Cena can keep doing his ‘family favourite’ shite so he needs to toughen up, knuckle down or sod off. As long as he picks one, I don’t care which it is.
Vince came out before HBK and Big Show could lock up and announced that Michaels wouldn’t be in the tournament as he’s retiring next week whether he wants to or not. I like McMahon in ‘pissing people off’ mode, especially when he knows it’s just as applicable to the viewers at home as it is to the characters he’s talking to in the arena. I still don’t get how he makes it look like he’s flipping you the finger when all he’s doing is smiling. Meanwhile, Shelton Benjamin was drafted in as a suitable replacement and he and Show did a decent job. Did you see that spin kick from Shelton? Dammit if that wasn’t clean enough to nearly knock Show off his feet legitimately. Show got the slightly predictable win and advances. Shelton once again looked good as the loser and Momma took a turn for the worst and had to be stretchered out. Hopefully she’ll be back and won’t be the second storyline character death in WWE history. Plus, I wanted to ask her why such a virtuous, churchgoing lady has a tattoo on her breast. Never mind.
Is it just me or would a long series between Carlito and Rob Van Dam, leading to a Wrestlemania match, be beneficial for both us and them over the next few months? RVD looked hungrier than I remember him before the injury layoff and Carlito seemed up for the fight, including that sweet double-jump corkscrew senton (he’s been keeping that one quiet). I was a big fan of RVD in ECW but he still has a lot to prove in WWE and that includes maintaining his energy from bell to bell, not going to sleep for the middle section like he was prone to do. There seems to be a shared optimism in both RVD and the WWE about his return and he’s going to have to drop the outsider stance and throw himself into the full mess of the product if he wants to avoid being eternally known as the best WWE wrestler who never quite made it. Conversely, the company is going to have to realise that they have in RVD a performer and athlete who is as over as anyone else right now and someone who doesn’t have to cup his ear or mention whichever town they’re in to get a response from the crowd. That kind of fan-created heat shouldn’t be ignored, even if the recipient isn’t first choice for employee of the Millennium thus far. Carlito will lose no momentum from this loss and should retain his spot leading into Wrestlemania. I am tentatively putting Carlito back ahead of Masters in their ascension up the card. I wonder if Vince is thinking of giving him the microphone again now that the wrestling aspect of Carlito’s career is coming together? Just a thought.
Remind me, the next time I see a match involving the divas where the idea is to strip them of their clothes and dignity, to doubt the sincerity of their modesty. Based on talent alone, it was probably lucky for us that the rematch between Ashley and Mickie James took less time to complete than most of the divas spend getting dressed but the Stratus/James feud is in dire need of a major angle. Most segments in this storyline seem to end with one or more of the protagonists staring dizzily at the others with a look of bewilderment on their face and the same is starting to be felt by the audience. And, as Trish Stratus continues to stutter and grimace her way through other performer’s moments, it is feeling increasingly like she is a weak champion because she cannot control a situation no more emotionally challenging than a schoolyard spat. If the WWE expect us to stay with this feud, they’d better start giving us some ‘this week’, instead of ‘next week’ all the time.
Police have taken away the Shelton Benjamin action figure that Eugene gave to Shelton's Momma for forensic tests. Apparently they snapped off the figure’s plastic head and inside was a wrap of smack and Courtney Love’s phone number.
So that was the “uncensored” version of Candice Michelle’s Godaddy.com commercial? We can only hope the bits omitted for public safety were any shots of her huge hair and heroin-chic make up job. I guess we should be grateful that, in a superficial sense at least, the WWE knows how to make their women look good on-screen.
This Raw, more than most I can recall, proves that the whole really is greater than the sum of its parts. Some bad segments and badly executed matches couldn’t detract from the overall positive vibe the WWE’s main broadcast has given in recent months and this Monday’s was probably the best of the bunch. A word of caution though. It looks as though Vince has decided to stuff this year’s Wrestlemania event with solid wrestling rather than relying on dream matches. Whilst this is a wise move, because it has a better chance of sending fans home happy from the PPV as opposed to packing them into the arena happy, it puts a far heavier onus on the build up. Any mistakes in the Raw writing over the next two months will be amplified when the opening bell rings at the Chicago supercard in April and there’s no star-power to gloss over careless preparation. I’d bet good money that Vince knows this already.
Lee
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