WWE Monday Night Raw Recap & Review 10/15/12

Tonight’s Raw opens up with Big Show walking down into the ring, and giving a promo. He basically just comes out and says how shitty and mean Sheamus has been to him for the last few weeks or so, but shows a video from Smackdown. In the video, Sheamus goes to Brogue Kick Big Show, but because Sheamus is dumb, and Big Show is the f–king BIG SHOW, he just catches Sheamus’ stupid bicycle kick and flips him out of the ring violently. Then we cut back and Big Show goes on to let us all know how stupid it is of Sheamus to try to bully a 7′ tall, 500lb man who can knock you out with a single punch. Because that’s really all that’s happening here. Sheamus is a bully, through and through. The dude just does whatever he wants,to whoever he wants, with no sense of what’s right or wrong, and because he’s “cool” the average WWE fan just laughs off his actions, no matter how despicable, racist, or objectively terrible they are. So when It comes down to it, am I looking forward to Big Show knocking his stupid ginger head off his albino shoulders? Yes. Absolutely. I have no idea why Big Show is even supposed to be the bad guy in this, other than he hit John Cena once. I guess unless you’re a retired wrestler turned shitty movie star, hitting John Cena is an unforgivable, terrible offense that makes you worse than Hitler.

Eventually somehow Big Show’s whole spiel turned into him talking about his original WHC title run, which lasted only seconds until Daniel Bryan cashed in his MITB case to take the title from him. This in turn got spun around into a “redeeming” rematch between the two, and led to Daniel Bryan facing Big Show in a match.

I love both of these guys, but this is in my opinion, the one kind of match Daniel Bryan doesn’t excel at. Daniel Bryan does best in matches that have him going one on one with another person who can sell his more technical moves, or can match his technical prowess on the mat. His entire thing is about beating guys by wearing them down and slapping a submission on them, which generally works really well, but with bigger guys it’s not always the best. That’s not to say the match was bad, but compare it to say, CM Punk, and it’s a different story. CM Punk is always at his best when he’s up against a big, unstoppable force sort of wrestler. Your John Cenas, your Mark Henrys, or your Samoa Joes, if you were to go back into ROH territory. Daniel Bryan on the other hand, always seemed overwhelmed when taking on bigger guys, but perhaps that’s to his credit. All I’m saying is when Big Show slammed Daniel Bryan to the ground and pinned him for the win, I wasn’t shocked.

It was pretty nice to see Kane come out to defend his Tag Team partner, in a twisted show of affection between team mates. Of course, Big Show just held up his fist and screamed at Kane, which made him back off until Show left. I don’t blame him, because the dude could probably just hold up his hand and scream at a f–king grizzly bear and it would run away shitting itself in fear.

After the break we’re in the ring with Paul Heyman, who is there with the WWE title, and a poster board with a drape over it. He takes his time to announce CM Punk, and remind us he has held the title for 330 consecutive days, (a feat that merits respect, I still don’t understand how you cannot respect this, it’s ridiculous) and that he’s making his decision for his opponent at Hell In A Cell. CM Punk comes out and teases us for minutes, until finally revealing that he needs more time to make his decision. He’s really trying to milk for heel heat here, and as Vince McMahon promised last week, if Punk didn’t make up his mind, he would for him. So Vince shows up, and tells Punk that TONIGHT, that he will pick his opponent. Just, you know, not right now. It’ll be at the end of the show. For reasons.

The main and fatal flaw with this entire match, is that somehow this one is the match deemed necessary for Punk to FINALLY gain respect and be considered “one of the best”. Despite almost singlehandedly making the WWE relevant again with a single promo last year, or his laundry list of achievements in all of professional wrestling, including multiple championships and a current record holding reign. For some reason, everything he’s done to earn our respect and admiration of all last year, is wiped away because he clotheslined The Rock. It’s funny, because as much as I love The Rock, everything he does now for the WWE just hurts it. What value does he add by defeating John Cena? What value does he add by showing up randomly, promising a bunch of shit, and then disappearing again? And most importantly, what value does he add by making another attempt at becoming the WWE champion again? Sometimes you gotta know when to hang it up dude. You WERE The Great One,now let it go.

First and foremost, CM Punk is by definition of being the WWE Champion, the best in the world, so there’s that. Secondly, there’s this quote from JR tonight, that really tells it all.

“I think CM Punk has done an amazing job of being a WWE Champion. My point has always been, if wants to be considered in the same breath as the Undertakers, The Triple Hs, The Austins, The Rocks, The Shawn Michaels, then… You… you gotta do… you gotta do a Hell In A Cell in some point of your career.”

I put emphasis on the stutter in that quote, because JR is basically saying that to be considered a WWE legend, in line with some of their all time greats, unless you’ve done a Hell In A Cell match, that EVERYTHING ELSE you’ve done doesn’t count. Somehow the allure of a HIAC match brings with it magical greatness that takes you to a new echelon of superiority. How this logic works in JR’s mind baffles me, and I’m convinced it was a line he was fed through his earpiece to say, because it sounds exactly like the inane bullshit the writers come up with to justify a match, or more likely, to justify why a character who’s really never done anything that was actually wrong, as a bad guy. If you want us to hate CM Punk, I dunno, have him do mean, awful things that don’t make sense, and bully people needlessly. Oh wait, that’s Sheamus, and we’re supposed to love him. Goddammit.

They did us a favor this week, and skipped Funkasaurus’ 10 minute dance intro and got right to the match. Lately I’ve noticed Alberto Del Rio hasn’t been arriving in his cars anymore either, which could only mean one of two things. 1.) He’s been pretty drastically affected by his current pseudo rivalry with Randy Orton, and has filtered thousands and thousands of dollars into researching some kind of apparatus to predict when an RKO is coming. Because they always arrive OUT OF NOWHERE.

2.) WWE is tired of renting luxury cars.

So you know, it’s probably 2. Regardless, defeating Funkasaurus isn’t that big of a deal. You just gotta hit him in any of his major joints and the dude goes down like a gimped horse. Slap his arm into the Cross-Armbreaker, and he’ll tap almost instantly. For such a big guy he has a very small tolerance for pain. Alberto Del Rio winning is NOT surprising, to say the least.

Backstage we see CM Punk and Paul Heyman having lovers quarrels. Or arguing about Vince McMahon. I say should point out that it’s not technically a lover’s quarrel, because Punk doesn’t seem to reciprocate the unabashed, adoring love that Heyman has for Punk. Heyman is friend-zoned. Hardcore. Poor Heyman.

As much as I’m loving the newly reinvigorated tag team division, I’m still not a fan of these teams that consist of 2 previously mostly singles only wrestlers becoming a team. You can’t often hit gold like they have with Team Hell No, and Team CoBro (ugh) just doesn’t cut it. Apparently someone in creative agrees with me, because The Primetime Players pretty much put the smack down on them hard, and won within minutes. I like The Primetime Players, and I think they could use some more segments, or time to make more promos. I don’t think they get enough character exposure, as opposed to their wrestling time. I think we see the right amount of time for them in the ring, to keep them relevant. Let’s just give them a skit, or a promo here and there, and it’ll all be good.

This new 3-Man Band of Heath Slater, Jinder Mahal, and Drew Mcintyre coming out to stomp on Zack Ryder’s corpse and play air guitar to their theme music was pretty hilarious. They’ve managed to take 3 guys (well 2) who deserve more air time, and successfully make them a stable that seem to exist solely to beat up dumb guys, and play air guitar. How you can not love that, I don’t understand.

Awesome.

Suddenly we’re privy to the ear-splitting screech of Vickie Guerrero, who introduces Dolph Ziggler in her typically shrewish way. A fun note, I just recently attended a taping of Smackdown, and can dutifully confirm that people HATE Vickie Guerrero more than every other heel combined. The outpour of boos for her were utterly deafening, and during her entire time speaking you could not hear a single word spoken. If they were ever gonna try to turn her face, I have no idea why, but if they were, it’d be impossible. She could go up there and promise free WWE merchandise for life for everyone in attendance if they just stayed quiet, and it’d never, ever happen.

Anyhow, Ziggler says some stuff about how hard he’s worked for his MITB contract. How he’s jealous that The Ryback gets all the talk these days when comparatively, Ziggler has worked far harder than The Ryback to get contendership recognition. David Otunga then comes out, and spouts about his mental attenuation along with physical fitness. He says he’s worthy of a title shot, and this is what leads to their fatal flaw. Their fatal flaw here is saying The Ryback’s name enough times to awaken him from his hibernation, thus unleashing his insatiable hunger. Along with The Ryback, they’ve gotten notice of AJ, who brings The Ryback in tow with her, and schedules a triple threat match between the three of them right then and there.

While watching this match, my friend Vera pointed out something I had never noticed before about The Ryback. Namely, his teeth are totally busted. For a dude who talks a lot about being fed, the guy needs dental work. Maybe that’s why he’s always hungry? Perhaps it’s hard for him to really get anything down when he’s nursing such a terrible dental issue? Maybe Tressa is right about him really just being a big baby, and he’s just teething. Like he’s literally just a giant baby transplanted into a huge man-body. It makes sense when you think about it. The marching, the tantrums, the heavy breathing, the teething, the constant crying for food… I’m just saying, there’s been weirder storylines in WWE history.

Anyhow, The Ryback Ryback’s both Ziggler and Otunga. After Ziggler ditches Otunga and runs away, The Ryback devours Otunga’s corpse messily, and we all rejoice.

Backstage, Paul Heyman is trying to butter up Vince McMahon in CM Punk’s favor, and puts for a challenge in Punk’s name. He pitches a rematch between Vince and Punk, with the stipulation being if Punk wins, he gets to choose his opponent. Vince then makes the match with Heyman, to Heyman’s disarray, and then proudly claims to love himself. No really. He does.

Afterward, we see AJ walking by, and is interviewed by Matt Stryker about something or other. Stryker makes the foolish mistake of even saying the word “crazy” around AJ, and she suddenly schedules him to be in a match as punishment. Punishment for ostensibly being a person who was alive around her at that time, I suppose. AJ, why is your character so fragmented? Why are you sometimes good, sometimes bad? It doesn’t come off as unpredictable, unstable, or edgy like your writers want us to think, it just comes off as inconsistent and shitty. For somebody who used to have the deepest, most intricate and multifaceted character in WWE, you sure have gone a long way down from those heights.

…God I still love you though.

I really can’t say enough good things about Antonio Cesaro. The dude is shoot strong enough to lift a guy as heavy as the Funkasaurus, and makes is look easy. On top of that, he’s incredibly dominant in ring, and has an excellent signature move where he just throws a guy almost 10 feet up into the air, and then just uppercuts their goddamned head off.

Just imagine Justin Gabriel in the place of Tyson Kidd there. It’s just as amazing.

 

So when Antonio Cesaro comes out, pumps his fists, and then talks about how much ass he can kick in five languages, he tends to get my respect. His win over Justin Gabriel was pretty definitive, and just adds more luster to his current prestige.

Apparently Matt Stryker found it necessary to get into his full wrestling gear, just to grab a mic and beg Kane for mercy. He emphasizes how unnecessary it is for Kane to even face him, and more or less says he’s a non-threat. He pleads with Kane, who then spreads his arms in embrace. Stryker then accepts Kane ostensible proposal to hug it out, and they proceed to hug. It lasts for a minute, then Kane ends up choke slamming him to death any way. The brilliant part was his little post-match promo, where he lays down with the dying Matt Stryker, and mocks him by putting the mic in front of his mouth, before declaring himself to be the Tag Team Champions.

Somewhere, Daniel Bryan is shouting angrily and stomping. Dr. Shelby needs to come back and help these guys one last time.

Okay, I love The Miz. Honest, I do. I think he’s a perfectly competent wrestler, and great on the mic. I love his douchebag smarminess, and his sense of self entitlement that he brings with him. I think he makes a great heel character, and an even better commentator. However, I cannot STAND Miz TV. Even more so now, because he’s feuding with Kofi Kingston, who might as well be poison for my attention span. The two of these together, honestly I had no interest in watching, and still have none. I can’t tell you what actually happened, but I’ll guess they shit talked each other, and then promoted their stupid match on Main Event for the Intercontinental title. I swear if Kofi Kingston wins that title, I’ll just… I’ll just die inside. I will.

I like Wade Barrett. I hate Sheamus. I wanted Wade Barrett to crush Sheamus in this match, but of course that didn’t happen. I have difficulty watching any matches with Sheamus in them now, because I just want to see him get beaten until all of his skin is a deep dark black and blue. When Big Show showed up with a chair, I nearly jumped for joy at the prospect of a Sheamus beat down at the hands of Big Show and Barrett. But then Big Show just sat there on the chair, watching them both from a distance. Wade Barrett batted around Sheamus for a few minutes, briefly giving me hope that we’d see Sheamus lose a shameful defeat. Those hopes were dashed when Big Show interfered in the most lame way possible, and just held down the top rope, making Sheamus fall out of the ring when he was whipped into the ropes. That resulted in a DQ win for Sheamus, and Big Show walking out of the place like he was somehow proud of that decision. Lame.

Backstage Vince McMahon is on the phone, and hangs up to have a meeting with John Cena. Cena then says some more bullshit about never giving up, and ignoring doctors orders. I’m not sure, because I really just tune him out now. It’s the only way to stay sane.

I’m not gonna lie, I spent the most of this match trying to look at Layla’s boobs. I kept imagining how big they really were, because of the nature of the wrestling bras/tank-tops they wear. I then snapped back to reality when I realized that the match itself wasn’t half bad. I mean, not half bad for WWE standards anyway. The women’s division is one place that Impact Wrestling has them beat, hands down. Why the WWE doesn’t just blatantly copy them I don’t understand. Regardless, they seem to be re-using the old Foot-On-The-Ropes, Bad-Referee-Call thing they did for CM Punk and John Cena a few weeks ago. There’s not much a difference there, except that instead of get all righteously angry like CM Punk did, Layla just sat there and cried about it. I like your boobs Layla, give me a reason to respect them. Stand up for yourself. If Eve cheated, call her on it. Until then, you’re not above ogling.

Backstage, Daniel Bryan and Kane are talking about their respective relationship woes. After some remarks are traded about what they both did or didn’t find funny, Daniel Bryan says that next week Kane should fight Big Show. He then declares himself the Tag Team Champions.

He then cut off his ear and declared himself the new Vincent Van Gogh.

Cut to Vince McMahon talking to The Ryback, talking him up as the toughest SOB in the biz. The Ryback just stands there breathing heavily, until Vince asks him what his response is to everything said about. The Ryback replies with 3 obvious words: “Feed. Me. Punk.”

I don’t have anything against Primo and Epico really. Their gimmick doesn’t particularly grab my attention, but they’re definitely not immediately aggravating unlike certain other WWE Superstars. When compared to the greatness that is Rhodes Scholars however, they pale in comparison. Damien Sandow and Cody Rhodes pretty much annihilate them, using more tags throughout this match than almost all the other tag team matches in recent memory put together. I’d dare to say they use this aspect of the tag team rules the most effectively I’ve ever seen. They work together really cohesively, and end up defeating Primo and Epico resoundly, ending with the perfect finishing taunt of the assisted cartwheel.

Perfect.

So this is a grudge match thing now? Between Miz and Kofi? And we’re supposed to believe that somehow Kofi is supposed to better than Miz? All I saw was a big pile of boring, with The Miz struggling to work with that pile he was given. I have two different kinds of hate for wrestlers in the WWE, and I’ll clarify it for you.

There’s Sheamus hate: Where a wrestler’s actual in-ring ability is overlooked or otherwise rendered obsolete or negated by how terrible a character he has. See: Tensai.

And then there’s Kofi Kingston hate: Where a wrestlers in ring ability is non-existent, yet somehow still gets face heat, and is inexplicably popular despite being unwatchably boring in the ring and on the mic. See: Randy Orton.

Which do I hate more? I honestly can’t decide. All I know is I hate them both. So when Kofi Kingston won the match, all I can say is that I’m not looking forward to ignoring the Intercontinental Champion entirely. Hopefully Miz will retain, or somebody worth half  a damn will take it from Kingston.

After that shitfest, we come back from the break to Vince McMahon preparing the contract signing to decide Punk’s opponent at HIAC. The Ryback enters, along with John Cena. They all hurf durf around for 5 or so minutes. John Cena gets especially hurfy and extra durfy, and makes sure to say something about never giving up. Punk continues his streak of saying perfectly reasonable things, and getting booed for them. Calling Vince McMahon and John Cena egomaniacs, is by NO MEANS uncalled for, and is probably the most accurate and telling thing you could call them. Cena for some reason acts like this is THE MOST OFFENSIVE THING, and even tries to talk down Punk’s achievement of the record making championship reign. Then he goes on to say how tough The Ryback is, and steps down from the ring, saying The Ryback is the man to “whip CM Punk’s ass”. The Ryback signs the contract, and then Rybacks CM Punk. Everyone chants about how hungry they are on The Ryback’s behalf, and the show ends on a close up of The Ryback’s oddly shaped head.

MORE TACOS!

 Incidentally, as of this writing, I am pretty hungry. Perhaps I should FEED ME MORE. FEED ME MORE. GRAMMAR BE DAMNED, FEED ME MORE.

WWE Monday Night Raw Recap & Review 10/8/12

*Pictures and accompanying text by Cheesebadger!

Cheesebadger here! Sometimes I like to get different viewpoints on Raw from different people, just to make sure I’m not insane. I think it’s beneficial every once in a while to let somebody else give their opinion, so this column isn’t just “F–K SHEAMUS” every damn week. That being said, my friend Tressa is an avid Raw/WWE fan, and has plenty of great opinions about the show, so I’m happy to have her share them here. Now enough of me, you’ll get more of my inane commentary next week! Take it Tressa!

WWE Monday Night Raw Recap & Review 9/25/12

Tonight’s Raw opens with as cold an opening as it could have, with Paul Heyman and CM Punk doing a classic style sit in, about the end of last weeks Raw. Heyman goes over the ridiculous call the Ref made, clearly ignoring Punk’s foot on the ropes last week, thusly giving the win to Cena. He goes on into detail about it for a while longer, and has the Ref in question appear before him, to admit his mistake, and give his resignation. After some stalling, the Ref comes into the ring, clearly nervous. He gives his explanation, saying he was nervous, and made a bad call. He apologizes, but refuses to resign. Punk and Heyman berate him, and insult AJ at the same time. AJ hears her name, and appears, skipping her way down. She says she’s not there to reverse any decisions, or fire the Ref, but is instead there to get them to leave, saying they’re holding “her” show hostage.

Punk starts to accuse AJ of having a grudge against him, citing her proposal to him months ago. She looks shaken, and he continues, citing a litany of incriminating evidence towards her bias against him, including but not limited to dressing like him, sending him hundreds of illicit texts (allegedly), and even implies that they had some sort of sexual relations, “behind closed doors”, and that his entire “best in the world” gimmick, comes from her praise of his sexual prowess. (allegedly).

He really lays into her. You could say. 

  AJ is noticeably bothered by all of this, and Paul Heyman takes the mic from Punk, and then gets down on one knee, asking her for her hand in marriage, saying they’ll be a new power couple to lead a new wave in the WWE. If that wasn’t insulting and creepy enough, he even says that he likes ’em young, which was funny, because Heyman really does seem like that kind of guy. AJ slaps him, of course, and leaves the ring.

A proposal by Paul Heyman is a fate worse than death. Apparently. 

Backstage The Ref is seen regretting his bad call, and thanks AJ for standing up for him. She threatens to fire him if a bad call like that is ever made again. She continues to lay into him, all the while staring off into the distance, doing her whole crazy girl affectation thing again, which brings her to tears, strangely enough. I’m guessing the job is getting to her, and she’s finally starting to crack.

Holy crap, gayest screen cap ever. Good job Youtube.

Vickie Guerrerro then EXCUSE ME’s her way on stage, introducing Dolph Ziggler. Michael Cole briefly mentions that Kofi Kingston and Dolph had beef on Twitter, and this is why they’re wrestling tonight, rather than the hundreds of other times they’ve wrestled each other without provocation. These guys have wrestled so many times, that seeing them wrestle turns my brain off. Not even R-Truth/Little Jimmy throwing a cup of soda on Vickie could really grab my attention. I’ll tell you what did grab my attention though, was Kofi Kingston botching a drop kick in the worst way possible, missing Ziggler by a good solid foot. Kofi is one of those workers who just pulls down everything and everyone he works with. The dude is a black hole that just sucks up talent, and everyone in his vicinity becomes less talented when around him. After a bunch of back and forth moves between the two, Ziggler finally lands the Zig Zag, and wins. It was a good enough match, and in retrospect, was one of the better ones of the night, but I just can’t stand Kingston. He’d have to set himself on fire and do the SOS on a bucket full of rattlesnakes to get me interested in anything he does. The match seemed designed to push Kingston as a singles competitor again, but I’m sorry, the man isn’t worth it, and it just made Ziggler look weak.

I’ve been vocal with my love of Ziggler on this column, but man, the dude needs to hurry up. He’s spent FAR too long dicking around with his MITB contract, and wrestling schmoes who are beneath him. What happened to the Ziggler who was all I’M BETTER THAN THIS a few months go? That was a good Ziggler I want to see more of, not this ho-hum, bide-my-time loser. If I’m sound extra critical of him this week, it’s because I hate to see what I love, not live up to its potential, and in this case, it doesn’t seem to be the fault of WWE creative, but Ziggler himself. In Kayfabe terms, anyway. I’m sure in real life, he has to wait until the writers are satisfied with letting Sheamus lose the belt, but that won’t happen anytime soon because they just LOOOOVE big white racist strong guys.

After a recap of the whole Daniel Bryan/Kane Tag Team Championship reign/argument, they present the first in a series of segments, featuring Kane and Daniel Bryan still receiving help from Dr. Shelby.

Dr. Shelby and Daniel Bryan are in a restaurant, and Dr. Shelby is explaining they need to work on interacting in non-ewe environments. Bryan asks how, and Kane appears, dressed in a chef’s apron, ready to take their orders. He gets upset, but Dr. Shelby calms him, and asks Bryan to order. Bryan uses the order to insult Kane, but Dr. Shelby insists that Kane role-play the role of “Gerald”, the water. Kane/Gerald then describes an imaginary cook, who Kane found annoying, who took credit for Kane/Gerald’s work, and describes how he took the cook’s face, dunked it in the deep fryer, ripped out his beard, and put it inside of everyone’s food. The local diners look disgusted, and Dr. Shelby asks Kane/Gerald if he’s kidding, to which Kane/Gerald replies ambiguously

It was a funny segment, but I found myself distracted, because there’s a rumor going around that Being Human‘s Sam Huntington, is playing Dr. Shelby. Despite looking vaguely similar, and our own fellow WWE fan here at GB, Godzark, insists it’s him. I don’t believe it. Not only because Sam Huntington has said he isn’t him, multiple times on his own Twitter, but because even if it was him, I just don’t believe the WWE has that talented a make up team to make Dr. Shelby look so convincingly bald, not to mention his other differing facial features, and overall head size and shape. Judge for yourself:

Here’s Sam Huntington:

And here’s Dr. Shelby:

Nope. Not the same guy.

Coming back from the break, we see The Primetime Players awaiting their match against Santino and Zack Ryder. Why Santino and Zack Ryder? I’m not sure. Zack Ryder getting airtime is good, because I like him, and I wish he’d improve his skill set. I can’t think of why he’s teamed up with Santino other than both are silly? Proud of their ignorance? I’m not sure. As for the actual match, I did enjoy Titus O’Neill just grabbing Santino’s dumb Cobra arm, slamming him in the ground to death, and beating him right then and there. The Cobra is stupid guys. Santino is stupid. I have no idea why people like him anymore. I don’t have much more to say about this one, because it was so short.

Hopefully this means The Primetime Players are getting pushed again, but if there’s anything watching TNA wrestling has taught me, is that WWE has forgotten how to make tag matches exciting. They’re doing an admirable job or rebuilding the division, and giving the belts to someone meaningful like Kane & Daniel Bryan is a step in the right direction, they just need to follow through and actually have these mid card tag matches be exciting, rather than route, and by the numbers. I hate having to say how much better Impact Wrestling’s Wrestling is each week than WWE”s, because I love the WWE, and want the best for it. Impact/TNA is entertaining as all get out, but my emotional connection, the company/brand I love, is with WWE. Call me a shill, or a loyalist, but it’s the truth. You can do better WWE, I know you can! Keep at it!

After a quick announcement that there will be a special guest arriving tonight, they cut to a commercial. After the break, we’re treated to the return of the one and only, Hardcore Legend himself, Mick Foley.

Foley comes out and shares some of his memories of CM Punk. He starts to criticize Punk and Heyman, speaking of the CM Punk that he knew, until he’s very quickly interrupted by Punk himself. Foley recants a story that actually sounds like a shoot memory, detailing how when Punk originally won his title, Foley sent him a text congratulating him, and how Punk thanked him in return, saying it meant a lot coming from Foley.  Foley continues saying how since he was one who Punk respected enough to respond to, that Punk’s behavior, and alignment with Paul Heyman, disturbed him. He accuses Heyman of only positioning himself to benefit him, rather than the people he claims to represent, and that Foley himself was a Paul Heyman guy, until he learned to make his own decisions. Foley even makes a pretty solid point, asking why Punk needs Heyman, given his massive prowess on the mic, and his lack of need for Paul Heyman to speak on his behalf. It’s something I’d actually been thinking of as well. Why does Punk need Heyman to speak for him, when he’s such a great talker himself? My guess is it’s all part of building up more heat for him, because Heyman is a heat magnet from nearly any damn audience he confronts. The difference is, with Brock Lesnar, who can’t cut a promo for shit, it made sense for Heyman to do all the talking. For Punk, we just lose a great Punk promo, but I digress.

Punk really rolls around in the new Heel heat he’s getting, and insults the audience directly, and says Foley is wrong and doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Foley then reveals his intention, both Kayfabe and shoot, for being here tonight. Kayfabe, he’s here to encourage Punk to shake off the influence of Heyman, and make a name for himself at Hell In A Cell, citing his own famous HIAC experiences as career defining moments. In shoot terms, he’s there just to promote HIAC indirectly, and to really pull last grubby remnants of Face Punk down, and secure him as the #1 Heel in the company. Insulting Mick Foley is pretty much like committing Face suicide, and a surefire ticket to being hated by general audiences.

Punk then further insults the audience, and Foley’s hardcore legacy, implying that pandering to the audience, or doing any of the death-defying stunts Foley has done, are beneath him. The whole thing seems to really piss everyone off, leaving only me and a bunch of IWC smark ass Punk fans still loving him.Foley continues to goad Punk into going into the HIAC match with Cena, leaving on a pretty compelling promo, asking Punk if he’d rather be a legend, or a statistic. It was a pretty good promo, and still managed to highlight that Punk’s actions all have an internally consistent logic to them, while still showing Foley as the one goddamned person who can actually make a solid, consistent point about Punk, and not have it degenerate into  “You’re a jerk, I don’t like you anymore!. Well not too much, anyway.

A few weeks ago The Miz said he’d go the distance with The Ryback, who is still undefeated. As far as overcoming his Goldbergian stigma, he’s not doing a good job. The Miz does a good job at trying to hang in there, but for every counter, or distraction Miz utilizes, The Ryback simply out muscles him at every turn. It’s good to see The Ryback managing to still looks strong, because Miz isn’t made to look weak by this match, just absolutely dominated, which is what they should have done with The Ryback from the beginning. Seeing The Ryback Ryback jobbers for months on end just made him look like he wasn’t getting any sort of challenge, but guys like Miz, who are stable, confident mid card talent, are exactly the kind of guy The Ryback should be destroying. They’re finally starting to get The Ryback right. Hopefully, he’ll learn a few more moves, because his repertoire is getting extremely repetitive.

We see Daniel Bryan and Kane reminiscing about Smackdown last week. They recall their mutual joy of destroying 4 entire tag teams at once, each with a steel chair in hand. They continue describing, until they start yelling out loud in nearly orgasmic pleasure at the memory of causing pain to others. Eventually, the camera pans over and we see Mae Young, taking an order, and even though it’s clichéd and predictable, I still chuckled when she said “I’ll have what they’re having”. Because the thought of an old woman wanting to share in their orgasmic, sadistic ecstasy, is hilarious. Not that stupid joke from that Billy Crystal movie. Who knew Mae Young had such an angry, dark side to her, just waiting to be unleashed?

 GAH. She does look evil! 

Backstage, we see AJ talking to a bunch of Referees. She says some bullshit about the WWE not having instant replay, even though they totally do, and says it’s okay, because everyone makes mistakes. She’s approached by Alberto Del Rio, Otunga and Ricardo Rodriguez, who ask her why she’s asked them there. She tells them she wants them in a 6 man tag team match against Sheamus, Rey Mysterio, and Sin Cara. Which isn’t fair, because that’s more like a 5 man tag team match, but Ricardo is ever the positive one, proclaims them the Tres Amigos, and runs away joyfully.

Good lord. Tyson Kidd. Between Tyson Kidd being on Raw lately, and the Grizzly Bomb Drunk Review I did last week, I’ve been drinking a lot. For those confused, I take a shot every time I see Tyson Kidd on my television, and for the longest time, that shot just sat there, gathering dust and grime. Lately, I’ve had to take it one every other week, which is about 400% more than it was just a year ago.

As much as I like seeing Tyson Kidd jump around and do stuff, (Kofi, take note, this is what you want to be, and aren’t, in every way.), seeing Wade Barrett destroy people is fun too. I’m really digging his gimmick, and I get a real kick out of saying OY MOY NAYMS WAYEDD BEARETT IND MY BEAR-AGE ‘AS JUSS BEGONE, every time I see him. I just think that his finisher move, which I could have sworn was just a punch last week, was an elbow tonight. I suppose they’re trying to sell that he can hit hard from any angle, with his fists or elbows, which makes sense, but I’d prefer an affectation to sell it. Have him come out with gloves on, and remove one to ready the punch. Sort of like how The Rock took off his elbow pad for The People’s Elbow, but you know, less meaningless and superfluous.

Back from the break, Michael Cole is in the ring, describing the condition of Jerry Lawler, and some of the good news from Lawler’s Doctor. He then introduces Lawler, who gives this message, thanking his fans for all their support:

I thought it was great to see Jerry looking so good, and I love that he has a badass throne room with cardboard Elvis cutouts and knickknacks everywhere. His place totally looks like somewhere i’d totally dig hanging out. I’m very genuinely glad to see he’s doing well, and as much as I like him, I think it’s time he step down from wrestling and commentating alike, to ensure his future well being for his, and all of our sakes. Get well Jerry. Long live The King.

This match is an exercise in a bunch of wrestlers who just seem less than the sum of their parts. I’ve had my problems with Sin Cara and Mysterio in the past, and Otunga is a great backstage character, but a mediocre wrestler at best. Ricardo is obviously trained in the lucha style, but isn’t allowed to wrestle for real. Alberto Del Rio I think is great, but I’m really sick of seeing him lose to Sheamus. Aaaaand I’ve said plenty about Sheamus in this column, and I don’t think i’ll ever be able to top what I wrote about him last week, in regards to why I don’t like him, and why he’s bad for the company as a whole. It was particularly infuriating to hear JR refer to Sheamus as one of the best World Heavyweight Champions in history too. I enjoyed the minutes in this match where Alberto Del Rio got work pretty well with Rey Mysterio, as their style complement each other, but overall the match was forgettable. All the hoopla about Sheamus’ Brogue Kick is a bunch of bullshit too, because a bicycle kick to the head isn’t nearly as big a deal as they are trying to make it out to be. Add to that Sheamus viciously beating on Ricardo, and you’ve got a solid 10 minute segment that consists of me rolling my  eyes out of my head.

Oh yeah, Sheamus sucks.

This has no connection with anything, I just really wanted to share it with all of you.

After that shitgasm, we come back to a refreshing palette cleanser, where we see Dr. Shelby with Kane and Daniel Bryan, urging them to try a step in each other’s shoes. He orders them both two meals, for Kane, a salad, and for Bryan, a plate of meatballs.

It was interesting, because #1, I didn’t know Kane loved meatballs, or that it was somehow representative of him, in a culinary sense. I understand the salad for Daniel Bryan, since that falls right into his whole vegan thing, but meatballs? Kane? Are meatballs from Hell? Is this some weird commentary on meatballs, and how they’re inherently bad for you? I’m not sure.  After that, they both try the food in front of them. Kane burps uproariously, because apparently ingesting leafy greens puts his digestive system into overdrive. Bryan just says the meatballs weren’t as bad as he thought they were going to be, and promptly vomits into Dr. Shelby’s lap. I’m guessing his digestive system is just like Kane’s, but on the inverse spectrum. Watching Kane struggle with eating a tiny piece of lettuce was pretty awesome though.

As the age-old saying goes: You don’t win friends with salad.

Back to the ring, we see the Raw Active for tonight:

So yeah, I didn’t vote, because I didn’t like any of those. On twitter, I was in support of #Dragonfire, since that alludes to Bryan’s history as The American Dragon, and fire is Kane’s whole thing. Plus Dragonfire is way cooler than any of those three. After their introduction, the winner is chosen to be Team Hell No, which is ehhh.. It’s okay I guess. They’re then swiftly attacked by Damien Sandow and Cody Rhodes. Sandow appears to be wearing a new shirt, meaning he finally has some merch available, which I want. Unfortunately I can’t find any pictures of it, but it appeared to be a diagram of the evolution of man, from primate to man, to Sandow himself, which is just awesome.

I’m totally gonna buy that shirt one day.

After the attack, Sandow and Rhodes reveal they’re a team themselves now, and proclaim themselves RHODES SCHOLARS, which shocked the hell out of me, because any avid Withleather.com reader, will know that their head writer, Brandon Stroud, came up with that name and promoted it heavily on twitter. Hell, I thought it was brilliant and retweeted it myself a few times. Seeing them actually take that name, was pretty awesome, and that moment felt more like the connection the WWE wants us all to have with Raw Active, more than all other Raw Active’s put together.

Ugh. Another tag team match. Man I know these used to be good, but holy hell is WWE doing a good job at making me hate them all forever. Soon I’ll forget they ever used to be good. I’d hate modern, younger WWE fans to grow up thinking any and all tag team matches are inherently boring. Man that’s a saddening thought… I need something to cheer me up.

Jesus christ girl, DRESS LIKE THIS AGAIN. Take that business suit shit off!

Ahem. Well, this was a pretty typical Divas match. It had them trading moves sloppily, until Eve lands a simple neck breaker, and the win. In fact, in the time it took me to write this entire paragraph, the match ended.

The only interesting thing was when Kaitlyn came out, after having been “attacked” at Night Of Champions, which we all assumed was Eve. Kaitlyn says she reviewed the footage, and couldn’t identify her attacker, but could see her hair was blond. Eve looks totes shocked for realsies, and her and Beth Phoenix start arguing. Eventually, Eve just attacks her without any real provocation, which must mean she really has turned face again, because that’s WWE logic for ya! Now we’re just left with this pseudo-murder/leg-attack mystery thing, where some blond person is responsible for Kaitlyn’s injury. Was it Kaitlyn? Somehow? Maybe it’s just the way they’ll explain Beth Phoenix leaving WWE, which I hear she is doing soon. Whatever. That’s the Divas division in a nutshell isn’t it?

WWE DIVAS: “Whatever.”

Holy shit. I didn’t think it could get worse than Tensai vs Randy Orton last week. What can I say? Two big fat guys running into each other, whose moves are the inverse of each other, does not for a good match make. I want to like Funkasaurus as much as I did when he debuted, but the dude doesn’t do anything other than dance for 20 minutes, squash people with his fatness, and then dance for another 15 minutes. Tensai is Tensai, and isn’t worth writing about anymore. Period. Do you even care who won? Really?

The only saving grace of this match was Big Show appearing, and knocking out Tensai’s stupid hissing ugly face, and following it with a knockout punch to Funkasaurus as well. He looked a bit reluctant to knock out Funkasaurus, and his status as a face or heel is as of yet indeterminate, but regardless, seeing him come out and kill both of them was a merciful sparing of a match I, and nobody else either, should care about. Let’s go Show, continue using that IRONCLAD CONTRACT to make the show better by just punching stupid people in the face to death. Next stop: Kofi Kingston. Then, Sheamus. Go for the WHC gold. Why not? Eff Sheamus.

Not even this would make him interesting.

Listen. I hate John Cena, the wrestler. Hate him. He’s boring, his promos suck, his wrestling ability is limited to say the least, and his character is grating beyond belief. In every way he’s only popular for political reasons within the WWE, because for some reason, kids like him. I don’t understand it, but I guess I can’t, because I’m not a kid anymore. All I know is that segments like this, where John starts off by reminding me by what a good person in real life he is, fills me with mixed emotions. I have enormous respect for John Cena The Man, because his charity work, and dedication towards causes supporting breast cancer research, are objectively a good thing for him to be doing, and that fills me with some actual, genuine happiness, because screw cancer. Eff cancer up it’s stupid ass.

But then he goes on his usual, I’M GONNA WIN AND NEVER GIVE UP, I’LL MAKE IT, IT’S ALL FOR YOU, THE FANS, WITHOUT YOU WE WOULDN’T blah blah blah shit he always does. The dude has made a career out of cutting the same promo endlessly. It was awful. It feels like every other month something happens, and he comes out and says how he may be going away for a while, and with his recent shoot elbow surgery, we’re once again meant to believe he will. But we all know he’ll just be back again next goddamned week. It’s what he does. Nobody has ever gotten fired, quit, taken leave, and then just showed up again next week as many times as he has. I don’t think there’s any other job in the world you could do that at. If I got fired from the bar I work at, I couldn’t just show up next weekend and expect to work there, but this isn’t the real world, it’s the WWE Universe, where up is down, good is bad, and heels are faces and faces are heels.

Punk takes some time to insult John Cena in his own special way, while Paul Heyman molests his WWE Championship belt. At one point a CM PUNK chant starts up, but Punk pretends it’s them booing him, and insults them directly. He’s really trying to get himself over as a heel hardcore. He then threatens Cena, and dares him to run away, by saying that he’ll turn his back on Cena, and if he turns around and sees Cena still there, he’ll beat him to death. So to speak.

So Punk foolishly turns his back on Cena, who then pulls out a lead pipe from his back pocket, and hits Punk in the gut with it. Because you know, yeah, that’s what a role model does. Punk then crawls away, while Cena makes terrible “pipe bomb” puns, and says something about real men wearing Pink,(even though Punk wore pink first), officially co-opting pink as the go to heel color, and making it mean less in that particular context.

Backstage, Punk walks by a group of people, one of whom is Mick Foley. He returns to speak to Foley, and attacks him, then walks away in pain, but turns to see something, and looks terrified at what’s before him. Which is….

A heavy breathing The Ryback. Why The Ryback was there? Who knows. Why he was breathing so heavy? Maybe he’s got asthma? I’m not sure. Why Punk acted like he saw goddamned Cthulhu when it was just The Ryback? Who knows! All I know, is that this must be the beginning of The Ryback as a giant, moving force to be reckoned with in the WWE, or the beginning of a main card push for him, with a potential feud involving CM Punk. It’s all up in the air at this point.

So this episode of Raw is exactly what I’d use to describe a mediocre, middle of the road Raw. Nothing too bad, nothing that great either. The highlights were the Daniel Bryan/Kane segments, as usual, but really, it was full of boring tag team matches, because the ghost of Teddy Long is obviously possessing AJ, and really only seemed to be there to convince people that yes, Punk is a heel. He’s really a heel now guys. For realsies. Stop cheering him? Please?

WHOA. 

Monday Night Raw Recap & Review 8/3/12

After the typical last week recap, tonight’s Raw opens up with CM Punk and Jerry Lawler fighting backstage, in plain clothes. I should say, it opens up with Jerry Lawler attacking Punk, and Punk then knocking him to the ground and being carried away by referees, and faded away into the credits on a sprawled, unconscious Lawler.

Immediately after this, Sheamus enters the arena, ostensibly to get cheap Face heat by mentioning how great Chicago is, to a Chicago audience, and to talk about how baaaaaddd he’s gonna beat up Alberto Del Rio at the next PPV. Then of course, CM Punk interrupts him, to a pretty damn loud cheer from the crowd, who are clearly psyched to see CM Punk, and a very clear, very LOUD CM Punk chant starts. It was refreshing to actually see Punk get some damn respect for once. What proceeds is CM Punk utterly destroying Sheamus on the mic, with every single one of Sheamus’ very obviously rehearsed pop-inducing face comments, being utterly ignored or booed by the Punk loving audience. In a situation where the script obviously called for Sheamus to be the guy the crowd rallied behind, the whole thing failed miserably for him, simply because the writers forgot to factor in the fact that Chicago frigging LOVES Punk, and were hanging on his every word. A highlight was seeing Punk toss back the word “Fella” at Sheamus derisively. Another was Sheamus desperately trying to remind an audience that clearly hates him, that he’s the World Heavyweight Champion. It was glorious watching him go all,  “Hey Punk fella, I’m the WHC, that sure does matter doesn’t it? Right guys? Hey… is this thing on? Oh god…”

Love me? Please? 

Punk makes a solid, long promo, defying anyone to say he’s turned their back on the WWE Universe, to uproarious applause from the audience, and continues his “disrespect” rhetoric, until AJ comes out to make a match between the two, saying it’s a Champion VS Champion match, and just leaves.

After the break, we get a quickly set up match between Randy Orton and Dolph Ziggler. The thing as a whole was more or less pretty good, despite the fact that I just can’t stand Randy Orton. I love Ziggler but the fact that I found this match forgettable, is a testament to just how boring I find Randy Orton. The man is the King Midas of boring matches. In fact, I’m having a really hard time remembering ANY Randy Orton match I’ve ever found interesting, or at the very least, not forgettable. This is the case of a stellar performer like Ziggler, being dragged down by a mediocre worker, who for reasons I’ll never understand is popular. I can’t help but think if the match was Ziggler and anyone else, this would have been a highlight for me, but it’s just not the case. Regardless of what I think, the match had a few interesting bits, because seeing a superplex will always be cool, and the fact that Ziggler managed to pin and beat Orton clean, was a goddamned saving grace. If Orton had won, it would have been possibly the most forgettable match of the night, and another amongst the plethora of reasons to hate Orton.

At the end of the match, The Miz walks out, and joins Michael Cole at the commentary table, to replace Jerry Lawler, who they previously announced is all hurt and injured, for realsies. FOR REALSIES GUYS. I presume Lawler wanted his Labor Day off, probably to go hit on 16-year-old girls, so having him replaced was pretty great. Unfortunately, The Miz wasn’t nearly as awesome on the commentators mic as I hoped he’d be, which was really disappointing. I had high hopes for him, and he really kinda let me down the whole night.

Next, we cut to Daniel Bryan and Kane in Anger Management Therapy again, and this time, they’re presenting their anger collages. Bryan presents his, which is a paper with the words YES and NO scrawled over and over, and he expresses the fact that he feels everyone is mocking him by continuing to say YES at him, which is at least consistent with his character, since months ago he DID say he felt the people were mocking him. It was a cheap way to deflect how over he was with everyone after hie Wrestlemania debacle, but they ultimately made the right choice by deciding to keep him Heel rather than use that heat to quickly turn him Face again. In the long run, it’s only benefitted him more anyway. So next we see Kane’s anger collage, which is a blank piece of paper. The counselor asks him if that blank piece of paper represents what Kane feels inside, and Kane stands up, throws the paper into the trash can, and then summons a burst of flame from the can, presumably incinerating the paper. He sits back down, and Daniel Bryan calls him a teacher’s pet.

I love the idea of Kane using his pyrokinetic abilities in real life situations. He’d be great guy to call to help set up bonfires, or if you needed to get your BBQ lit, because those coals were being extra stubborn. I think they even did that once, at the Great American Bash. So in fact, there is someone out there like me, writing ridiculous, retarded ways for Kane to be relevant outside of the wrestling ring. I’m glad there is, because I see the only way to make his character new and exciting again, is to just go full meta like they seem to be doing, and just have him become the Deadpool of the WWE. Having him apologize to Josh Matthews while choke slamming him because HE CAN’T HELP IT AUUURGHHH, is great. Having him reference his insane litany of history that’s canon in WWE is another way, and following it up by having him continue to be willfully absurd is a pretty great thing. It works, in an insane way, and is the kind of comedy wrestler I actually can enjoy.

Ugh. Man. Tensai.  I honestly had half a mind to just write “TENSAI IS STUPID.”  a couple dozen times instead of this paragraph, but I’ve probably said that enough times in this column. The match itself wasn’t actually half bad, and seeing Cody Rhodes against Rey Mysterio, made both of their move sets work better, since they’re lighter performers, and their whole dynamic worked well, since it made all of their moves make more sense. I can buy the fact that the 619 is a damaging move for a guy like Rhodes, because it makes sense.

When you do what amounts to a running spin-around drop kick through the ropes, I’m sorry, but I just don’t buy that you running and kicking someone like, oh let’s say Big Show, Cena, Kane, or even Randy Orton, is at all damaging. It doesn’t look good no matter how well they try to sell it. When someone like Rhodes does his Crossroads finisher, which is just a spinning face plant neck breaker thing, when it’s one someone bigger than him, it looks lousy. When it’s on someone his size or smaller, he effin’ slams their whole body into the mat by rapidly twisting their neck, and it looks painful as hell. I guess what I’m saying is, they need to create some kind of cruiserweight division again, where guys their size can fight other guys whose moves will complement each other, and we can get more faster paced, athletic matches from them, while still keeping the heavy hitting, methodical, grapple-fests from the bigger guys. You don’t even have to call it a cruiserweight division, just have those guys wrestle each other.

What? Right. The match. Rey Mysterio and Sin Cara win. Shocker, I know.

Back to Anger Management, we see the group Daniel Bryan and Kane are in, demonstrating trust falls. Daniel Bryan is hesitant, but lets Kane catch him, executing a successful trust fall. Kane catches him, and everyone applauds. The Counselor asks Bryan and Kane to work together, to catch their peer Harold. They extend their arms out ready to catch him, and both let Harold fall to the ground. Bryan asks Kane if he knew that he was not going to catch him, and Kane asks him back the same. Bryan says he feels like they are finally beginning to understand each other. Then we find out Harold may need medical attention, as he apparently took a pretty nasty fall.

Sheamus enters the arena again, ready to begin his match with CM Punk. Initially, this pissed me off, a lot. The fact that this CHAMPION VS CHAMPION match was what, the first of the second hour? It just seemed SO insanely disrespectful to BOTH of them (eff Sheamus), and the titles they hold. I got so upset I even TOUTED it to WWE, and in my mind’s eye, Michael Cole saw that Tout later that night, and thought, “This is true. Something must be done about this. Thank you Adam Popovich, your insight is invaluable. By the way, AJ says she totally wants to go out with you. Here’s her number.”

So when Punk comes out, he’s still dressed in plain clothes, and has a mic. He makes the perfectly reasonable point that a CHAMPION VS CHAMPION match is a Wrestlemania worthy main event, and uses the goodwill of the crowd to take the day off of work. He then leaves the arena, to mixed cheers and some boos from the crowd. On one hand, good on him. It’s Labor Day. If Lawler gets the day off, why shouldn’t he? On the other hand, I’m positive Chicago really did wanna see their Second City Saint wrestle that night. Sheamus tries to make some half-baked point about him “turning his back” on the fans, as well do Michael Cole and The Miz. Really though, the dude’s just taking a day off. I guess in the WWE Universe taking a day off might as well be up there with kicking puppies or loving Hitler, because they continually try to sell it as cowardly, or treacherous to his fan base.

Every single moment Punk was on stage/screen, that crowd loved him, and the only reason they booed him was because they wanted to see more of him. To try to spin that as anything else, makes you no better than Lawler. Besides, this whole angle is counterintuitive, because the goddamned WWE belt is SUPPOSED to mean you’re the best, and for them to try to say he somehow isn’t, doesn’t undermine Punk, it undermines the value of the BELT. Punk may not be the TRUE Best In The World, but goddamnit, right now, by definition, HE IS. Respect him for that. Let him, I dunno, compete in the MAIN EVENT of your PPV’s. Let’s see someone beat Punk clean, and then you can start trashing him about how he’s not the best, he never was, etc, etc.

On his way out, AJ tries to stop Punk from leaving. Punk reminds her of his contract (Is it Ironclad!?), that guarantees personal days. Not Josh Matthews comes to ask AJ what she’s gonna do for the match, and AJ says she’ll find Sheamus an opponent.

Back from a commercial break, Alberto Del Rio enters, and holy god, I was about to shit bricks with how uncreative a choice that was, but instead he takes seat ringside and starts giving commentary. Then Jack Swagger walks in, the sacrificial lamb in Punk’s place, because c’mon, there’s no way Sheamus is gonna lose to Swagger, and thus, no stakes in this match, or meaning. This is when you pull someone out like Tensai, or Big Show, and have it seem like some semblance of a challenge to Sheamus, who is riding so high on his Invincible White Guy gimmick right now they literally call him The Great White. A couple of times during the match, the crowd even begins to chant “BORING”, right up until Sheamus puts Swagger in a texas cloverleaf, which causes Michael Cole to freak out with excitement at seeing Sheamus use a submission for the first time ever. To give Sheamus credit, a man of his size, twisting your legs that way and place pressure on your back does seem pretty painful, so I can’t fault Swagger for tapping out, thus not making the whole ordeal look like a TOTAL cheap win.

Of course, then Del Rio jumps in to attack Sheamus, because screw it, it’s what Sheamus would do anyway right? Isn’t ADR supposed to be the Heel anyway? So it’s consistent with his character?  Right. Anyhow, Sheamus gets the upper hand, because reasons, and Ricardo Rodriguez, who is an announcer, and Alberto Del Rio’s friend, jumps in to break up the fight, or at least hold back Sheamus from continuing his beating on ADR, gets brutally Brogue kicked. I mean, sure, you could argue that Sheamus was “aiming” for Del Rio, but Ricardo very clearly jumps in to push him out-of-the-way, and Sheamus had plenty of time to stop his kick, but does it anyway. He then continues to taunt in front of Ricardo’s broken body, while Alberto Del Rio screams in worry and shock for his friends health, who now appears to be in a minor coma. I’m having a hard time trying to rationalize more and more how Sheamus is the good guy in this feud at all, and at this point, his entire reason for disliking ADR is that ADR is kind of a cocky jerk who flaunts his wealth, and is mexican. Everything ADR has done has been in retaliation for the scores of terrible things Sheamus has done to him. So despite the fact that these two guys have literally been fighting each other for the last 5 PPV’s in a row, I’m really rooting for ADR to just break his damn arm, and slap him with a restraining order, because it’s ridiculous how terrible Sheamus’ character is at being a good guy.

So after all of that noise, we get a divas match. Layla enters, and sits at ringside, giving commentary. Why they’re using this exact same trope again, beats me, and I’m guessing they’re hoping we won’t notice. Layla starts up some petty argument with The Miz about Eve’s character, who lately has attempted to try to turn Face again by acting, guess what? Honorable, Kind, and showing Good Sportsmanship! She insists that Eve is “phony”, and doing all of it as a ruse, and while she may end up being right, and I’d have to end up eating my words, the way things are in the WWE at this point I literally do expect the Heels to act far more honorable, kind and sportsmanly than any of the Faces.

As for the match itself, despite Kaitlyn’s weird man arms, they actually wrestled pretty well together. Eve even manages to win cleanly, and pins Kaitlyn, but still somehow, Layla manages to try to spin it as deceitful. Eve then checks on Kaitlyn to make sure she’s ok, congratulates her, and then exits the ring to shake Layla’s hand, in a show of good sportsmanship all around. I don’t understand how she’s supposed to be a bad guy anymore, but screw it. I mean, AM I IN GODDAMNED BIZARRO WORLD? Is there some universe where the WWE has its moral properties straight, and guys like Sheamus are vilified for being the goddamn hooligan assholes they are, and perfectly reasonable guys who are just kind of douchey aren’t seen as inherently bad?

The downside of that alternate universe would be that in real life, stealing, insulting, and beating people would be considered virtues, and sure Sheamus-2 would be a Heel, but Adam-2 would be complaining about why he isn’t a Face, when he’s clearly a good guy, based on all the lying, cheating, stealing and unprovoked attacks he does. Basically, no matter what universe I’m in, Sheamus pisses me off.

After that, we see Jack Swagger leaving the arena, with AJ following him. She asks him what he’s doing, and he says he’s leaving because he’s better than this. She acts like this is a big surprise, which is confusing for a multitude of reasons. Isn’t his match over? Why shouldn’t he leave? But really, he states that’s he’s LEAVING leaving, for a few months, probably because he’s goddamn sick of being buried so hard. AJ begs him not to leave, because Brock Lesnar, Jericho, and Punk have left, and now he is too. He tells her to get bent, and leaves back to his home planet. A planet called TNA Wrestling. Maybe. Hopefully.

And Jesus. AJ. You’re killing me. YOU were the one who made Jericho leave. You can’t have a “Loser Leaves WWE” match, and act like the guy abandoned you when he loses that match. I know, in real life Jericho left to focus on his band, but c’mon girl, kayfabe. Sometimes, I’d just rather attribute character inconsistencies or illogical choices due to breaking kayfabe, rather than just shitty memory/writing. Sometimes, I give the WWE too much credit. Ugh. Ok, sexy AJ pic time.

That’s better.

Back to Anger Management, we see Daniel Bryan expressing how his anger problem is cured, and is happy to give Kane a rematch for their match at Summerslam. Kane accepts it, while politely threatening him. They start to get in each other’s faces, with Bryan saying he’d make Kane tap out, and Kane threatening to destroy him in this very room. Harold pipes up, apparently recovering from his cranial trauma, and is quickly and angrily silenced by Daniel Bryan and Kane, who both yell at him to shut up. They continue taunting each other, and The Counselor tries to break up their fight, until he totally snaps, screams at them both, and storms off in a huff.

“Don’t let him hurt me Kane!”

Back to Michael Cole, who announces the WWE Interactive feature of the night, where he gives the WWE Universe the choice to choose what kind of match they’ll see. Tonight’s choices were:

You’re not misreading that. In a brilliant creative decision, someone decided to finally let the Raw Active thing do something useful, by putting up a hilarious “joke” choice as one of the selections, and you better believe I tweeted that #WWEhug like a mofo. In fact, ALL of twitter was lighting up with #WWEhug, singlehandedly justifying the use of Twitter, and Raw Active in one fell swoop. Some people complained about the overwhelming choice of @WWEhug, but goddamnit, why would you not want to see that? Why?

Backstage, Not Josh Matthews is asking a tearful Alberto Del Rio about Ricardo Rodriguez’s condition, and David Otunga shows up, saying that his “client”, will not be answering any questions at this time. I love Lawyer/Wrestler David Otunga, and think this kind of role is the perfect choice for him. I’m looking forward to the fake lawsuit ADR and Otunga will file against Sheamus.

So this was a match that happened. The Ryback Ryback’s Jinder Mahal. Is this supposed to be a feud? Are we supposed to suspend our disbelief to think that Jinder Mahal has a chance against The Ryback? The most interesting thing was The Miz saying he would go the distance in a match against The Ryback, which I’d actually like to see. This match was exactly like every The Ryback match ever, right down to the obligatory GOLDBERG chants. The Ryback wins. Also, the sky is blue.

Backstage again, we see Not Josh Matthews asking AJ what her plans are for tonight, since things are somehow falling apart, in his words. She tells him to tell Alberto Del Rio and John Cena, that their match will be a Falls Count Anywhere match.

Daniel Bryan makes his entrance into the ring, trying to calmly no… no… no… his way into the ring, followed by Kane. They stand in the ring, awaiting the results of the WWE Universe’s Raw Active choice. It’s announced that the winning match type is #WWEhug, meaning they have to “Hug it out”. What transpires, is probably one of the funniest damn things I’ve seen in WWE history. The two of them, both awkwardly trying to accept hugging each other, Daniel Bryan complaining that Kane didn’t hug him back, and the both of them finally, tenderly embracing, was priceless.

And EVERYONE cheered.

They then start to do the uncomfortable Bro-slap on each other, which escalates into them fighting each other, but holy hell, #WWEhug was a goddamn success. The whole thing as a de facto “match” being refereed, and The Miz spouting the “rules” of the match, was amazing. Of course, once they started fighting, Kane gets the upper hand and tries to put Daniel Bryan’s head inside a chair, and jump on it from the top rope, but he’s distracted by a group of Ref’s, and Daniel Bryan hits him with the chair and gets away.

I take it back. The official most forgettable match of tonight was between these two. Listen, I love Claudio Castignole. I do. But give him someone real to wrestle against. He’s goddamn great. Let him give the title some meaning. On the most part, this whole match consisted of Cesaro destroying Santino, and retaining his title pretty definitively. The best part of the match was Cesaro stomping on the stupid Cobra sock angrily. I honestly think the entire match was about two minutes long at best, so really, have Cesaro show his skills against someone real already.

This was probably the most underrated match of the night. The fact is, Zack Ryder, gimmicks and stuff aside, is a competent worker, who should be utilized more. So is Heath Slater. They’re both pretty much on the same caliber right now. Heath Slater may be playing resident jobber right now, but dammit if he’s not innately watchable. Zack Ryder’s enthusiasm is also very infectious, so really, the both of them ought keep doing what they’re doing, and we can get totally decent mid card matches like this. The only thing that would make them better is if they were longer. Zack Ryder gets the pin on Slater, and celebrates his official second win on Raw. I think. He’s never won more than twice? Damn. I didn’t notice. Anyhow, as harsh as that is, hopefully it’s changing.

Right after the match ends, Vickie Guererro walks into the arena, demanding a chair, to have a sit in, saying she needs to be heard. We cut to a commercial, and all I can imagine is that for 4 whole minutes, that poor Chicago crowd had to deal with Vickie just sitting there, boringly, while the live show they’re taping waits for the break to end, so they can continue the show. Perhaps something in timing was screwed up, because I’m feeling like the match should have gone on longer, and her coming out, and asking for a chair should have happened during the break, and we just come back to her in the ring with the chair.

And the whole thing is a setup for Vickie to reiterate her point last week, that AJ is abusing her power and “making things personal”, (GOSH A GM HAS NEVER DONE THAT BEFORE), but also, she demands a personal apology from AJ. She then starts to make the most retarded, already dated, shitty parody of the stupid Clint Eastwood/Chair thing that happened this last weekend. Thankfully it’s cut short, and never discussed again, as AJ comes out, and admits that the WWE Board of Directors have said she cannot place her hands on any of the WWE Talent, Staff, or Referees.

Vickie then embarrasses and humiliates AJ by demanding she apologize again after she already had. Then uses the whole “Board of Directors Mandate” thing, to insult AJ to her face, condescend to her, and then ends up actually slapping her in the face TWICE, knowing AJ can’t do anything about it in retaliation. It actually was pretty goddamned horrible, and made me feel for AJ again. I kept expecting AJ to announce her sudden resigning, and to kick the crap out of her, but instead she just takes it, accepting defeat.The crowd went insane the entire time, chanting SLAP HER, and USE THE CHAIR, right up until Vickie does her insane witch laugh out of the arena. AJ then grabs the chair, and smashes it against the ring floor in frustration. Really, I can’t blame her, and this segment went a long way towards endearing her to me again, whilst simultaneously making her appear somehow even more unhinged.

The main problem though, is that AJ has GM powers. Can’t she just fire Vickie? Or reprimand her for some reason? Or write her up for you know, assaulting the GM? C’mon girl, that Board of Directors thing goes both ways right? Right?

It’ll be okay girl. You smash that chair.

Despite Cena, this whole match was actually fairly long, and pretty damn decent. They opened up in ring like usual, and things proceed to spill to the outside of the ring, where surprisingly, Alberto Del Rio started to really dominate Cena, which was actually pretty surprising. At one point a LETS GO CENA/CENA SUCKS chant started up, and the interesting thing to note, is literally every single time that chant starts up, the LETS GO part is very high-pitched, and the CENA SUCKS part is significantly lower pitched. This is because only stupid kids are John Cena fans. Everyone else hates him.  Eventually, Cena tries to slam Del Rio through the announcer’s table, and tries dragging the steel steps over the table for a platform to suplex off of, but Del Rio counters it, and suplexes him through it instead. After a while, they end up heading backstage, and right as it looks like Cena is about to win, CM Punk shows up. Punk kicks Cena in the head, and rolls ADR on top of him, and surprise, surprise, Alberto Del Rio wins!

Punk then lifts up Cena, and slams his face into the hood of his a car. Punk kneels next to Cena, says the word “Respect”, hoists his belt in to the air, and Raw ends as we see that Paul Heyman is driving the car.

Which was supposed to be surprising, but it shouldn’t be SHOCKING to anyone who actually knows anything about wrestling, or pays attention to continuity, or you know, remembers anything that happened longer than a week ago. Last year, when Punk made his infamous “pipe bomb” shoot speech, he flat-out said he was Paul Heyman guy. In fact, that’s probably what got Paul Heyman back into the WWE scene. That and Brock Lesnar’s inability to talk on the mic, at all. Anyone who is surprised to see Mr. Paul E. Dangerously, and CM Punk, a wwECW alum, working together, is clearly just not paying attention, or is ignorant. I’m totally psyched for the whole damn thing, and even if WWE will keep straddling the line of Punk being a kinda sorta heel/tweener, if you have smark crowds like Chicago, you’re gonna have to change your storyline to reflect that. Period.

One funny side note, is that a fan had a sign saying “We Want Ambrose”, which made me laugh pretty hard. Keep waiting buddy.

Monday Night Raw Recap & Review: 8/27/12

Tonight’s Raw opens with a brief recap from last week, showing CM Punk issuing a challenge to John Cena, on the condition that Cena admit Punk is the best in the world. Cena refuses, because he thinks he’s the best, and made some lame ass pseudo inspirational rant about “always believing in yourself” and all that hokum he always spouts. After Cena abruptly left, Punk turned his attention towards Jerry Lawler, and demanded he apologize for his remark at Raw 1000, where he claimed that Punk had “turned his back” on the WWE universe, for attacking The Rock. Lawler apologized, but then “couldn’t say” that Punk was the best in the world, when asked to, despite having said and agreed with that notion dozens of times pre-Raw 1000. It’s ridiculously transparent how Lawler is insanely pro-face, in spite of any and all reason. Michael Cole may be his heel opposite, but he’ll occasionally provide logical reasoning behind why he likes the heels of the company. Anyhow, after refusing to admit CM Punk was the best in the world, he rudely bumped into Punk while exiting the ring, and Punk, in a fit of anger for the sign of enormous disrespect, kicked Lawler in the head. Let it be understood, that Jerry Lawler, (kayfabe) deserves this. He’s a terrible commentator. He says idiotic things all the time, makes no insightful remarks, and constantly promotes the faces, regardless of what their terrible, terrible actions may or may not be. Punk feuding with Lawler is supposed to make us think he’s turned heel, but all it’s done is endear him to me more.

I plan to use a couple more of these throughout this article, because goddamn. It’s true.

Following that recap, Jerry Lawler enters the ring, leaving his commentary table, and begins to speak about the events of the last few weeks, tell his side of the story, and then asks for an apology from Punk. Punk shows up, (sporting a new buzz cut, indicating a change of character. Seriously, his hair is almost always indicative of his character. It’s weird), and refuses to apologize to Lawler, defending his justifiable beat down of The Rock, and points out he never “turned his back” on anyone, and that the only person who did, was Lawler, who turned his back on Punk. He continues to explain this to Lawler, and gives the most backhanded apology in the world, slamming Lawler’s entire wrestling career, mentioning his feud with Andy Kaufman, the fact that Lawler has never been champion, and his loss to Michael Cole at Wrestlemania. It was pretty damn entertaining to see Punk rail into Lawler, and watching him stand there, stone faced, trying not to cry and/or attack Punk was pretty awesome.

It was a great moment that also featured this fan’s weird/awesome giant head sign.

Punk continues destroying Lawler, and ends up in a roundabout way challenging him to a fight, after seeing Lawler’s sad/angry face. Lawler regurgitates what he said earlier, about looking for an apology, and not a fight. Punk continues to call him a pussy, in so many words. He then says Lawler will leave embarrassed tonight one way to the other, either embarrassed from the beating he’d receive in the match between him and Punk, or embarrassed that he wouldn’t compete at all. Punk leaves, and Lawler says that “He’ll think about it.”

After that, we return right to a wrestling match between Jack Swagger and The Ryback. Swagger has been jobbing pretty consistently for a while now, and Michael Cole even mentions this fact, in a kayfabe manner by referring to his “losing streak”. They’ve been working on making The Ryback a bit more touchable lately, by having whoever he fights gain momentum in the middle of the match, which Swagger achieves, almost getting the Ankle Lock on him for a moment. The Ryback then gets the upper hand quickly, and amidst the cheers of his fans, who alternatively chant “GOLDBERG”, and The Ryback’s catchphrase, “FEED ME MORE”, he lands his falling suplex finisher. Which I don’t think has an actual name yet. It’s just a move he does that Michael Cole or whoever is watching him just comment on how “impressive” it is. So perhaps his finisher is called “The Impressive Finisher”, which is what I shall refer to it from now on. Seriously, I watch Raw and Smackdown every week, and unless I missed something, I have no idea what it’s called. So, The Ryback pins Swagger, and leaves the ring pumping his arms. Swagger sits outside the ring, grimacing in pain, probably thinking about quitting and joining TNA where he’ll have a chance to actually get utilized properly, and Jerry Lawler continues to say how he’s thinking about having the match with Punk or not.

Back from another break we go right into a Divas match. Natalya and Layla are actually two of the more talented female wrestlers from their small collection, and seeing them wrestle is something I actually would like to see more. Vickie Guerrero interrupts, and says she has an announcement to make, and that the match better end quickly so she could say it. The match starts, and we’re treated to a really decent match between the two. It’s actually pretty refreshing to see Natalya wrestle for a change, instead of relegated to being The Farting Girl on backstage skits on Smackdown. She’s the damned daughter of Jim Neidhart, the founder of the Hart foundation, and niece to Bret GODDAMNED Hart, so along with Punk, she deserves some respect. Seeing her attempt the Sharpshooter was a great moment, and if Layla wasn’t as talented and as likable as she is, I would have been really bummed to see her counter out of it. Thankfully, Layla picks up the win without using a roll up or small package pin, because that’s what they ALWAYS use to end Divas matches. She hits Natalya with a roundhouse kick, and pins her, and Vickie enters the ring.

Vickie says that AJ Lee has been abusing her power, by citing the example of last week’s Raw, where Jericho and Ziggler had a match, with the stipulation being that if Jericho won, he’d get Ziggler’s MITB contract, and if Ziggler won, Jericho would lose his CAREER contract. Vickie argues this is an unfair stipulation to the match for her to make, which it totally is. Only Vickie says that the MITB contract part is the unfair bit. If you ask me, a career contract, and a championship contract are not equal at all, and regardless of the side you take, Vickie has a solid point, that it is an abuse of power. She then publicly begs the WWE Board of Directors to put her back in the GM seat, and sack AJ, which prompts AJ to arrive.

AJ skips out, doing her usual cutesy-crazy affectations, hops into the ring, then slaps, and beats Vickie down to the floor. Pretty much solidifying Vickie’s argument about AJ being out of control and power-hungry. Vickie then runs out of the arena crying while… god… AJ bites her finger all sexily and…

 Oh god. 

 Ahem. She then composes herself and walks out. Basically, as much as I want to love and support AJ, she’s been a very middle of the road, typical GM that has done nothing interesting or new, and I’d rather see her wrestle, because she’s pretty damn good, and that suit she wears doesn’t flatter her at all.

Then we get subjected to a DX/Triple H video package. I’ve got nothing against DX per se, I’m just sick of video packages, and Triple H. The thought of having to see him address the events of Summerslam are so boring to me, I couldn’t care less. For those who didn’t see Summerslam, in a nutshell, Brock Lesnar beat the shit out of Triple H, and made him tap out. The crowd then shouted “YOU TAPPED OUT”, and “NA NA NA NA HEY HEY HEY GOODBYE”‘d him out of the arena, rather than the whole appreciative last stand thing, that he was clearly going for, or expecting. People are sick of him, and his stupidity. At least, the Summerslam audience was. Then of course, Brock Lesnar quit the WWE AGAIN, because that’s what he does, he’s a goddamn quitter.

After that, we see that AJ has ordered Daniel Bryan to take Anger Management classes, and we see a brief skit where Daniel Bryan attends Anger Management. What transpires, is one of the strangest,  but funniest skit’s I’ve seen in a while. Daniel Bryan sits in the Anger Management circle, and states that he has no anger issues, and couldn’t be calmer. In walks a young boy, wearing a goat mask. Bryan walks up to the child, and begins NO NO NOing him, upon seeing the goat mask. He then asks who set the whole thing up, and demands the boy take off the goat mask, by screaming at him. The Anger Management counselor says that the boy is his son, and plays a goat in his school play. The boy takes off the mask, and we see he’s crying. Daniel Bryan then looks genuinely sad and confused, and takes a seat. At the very least, he’s working through his issues right?  I love the idea that Daniel Bryan now has this pavlovian reaction to all goats now, and that all you’d need to do to distract him is hold up a picture of a goat. I keep thinking about him trying to watch TV and accidentally turning on Animal Planet, and catching a show about goats, and then raging out and destroying his whole living room, and slapping the YES-Lock on his dog.

Back to the ring, we see Jerry Lawler step back in, and speak. He defends his wrestling past, by pointing out the legends of wrestling he’s fought, and while he agrees with the other assertions Punk made, that Lawler is immature, never been champion, and feuded with a comedian, he tries to use those things inexplicably, to defend himself. After that, he accepts CM Punk’s challenge, and says he’ll fight Punk tonight. The crowd cheers, ostensibly in support of Lawler, but I’d like to think they want to see Punk destroy him.

After another commercial break, John Cena appears. Which was kinda shocking, because John Cena showing up, without being called out, or having something to get off his chest, simply to wrestle in a non-main event match, is pretty uncommon now. The biggest bummer was simply that the match up between him and Miz is so disparate, it might as well not even happen. The Miz has only just started to become a great mid card, IC champion, but having him up against Robo-Cena seems like a foregone conclusion.  However, Miz does give Cena a serious run for his money. If anything, the whole match built up Miz to get him over, since he dominated the whole thing, only with Cena doing his usual infinite Robo-Cena kick out, to the same as usual, goddamned shift into the 5 Moves of Doom, and his usual last-minute wrap up win. This match, despite Miz’s efforts to make it interesting, is a perfect example of what is wrong with John Cena. Every single match of his is like this. He gets his ass kicked, never sells anything, miraculously kicks out over and over, does 5 moves at the end, and wins. He’s boring. I can’t stand seeing him on my tv any more. It’s sickening that he’s the face of this company. Sickening.

Back to Daniel Bryan, we see him sitting through the Anger Management session. He sits there listening to some guy gripe about his boss, and his asked his opinion. He then expresses his, pretty solid feelings on how he’s been unfairly treated by his boss, who is his former girlfriend/ex-fiancee, who left his at the alter on live tv, puts him in a match with her demonic, pyrokinetic, psychopath pseudo-boyfriend, which he still won, and she forced him into Anger Management regardless. If anything, I’d say he has a right to be mad. The Counselor says he just got a text from the last patient who had yet to show up at the session, and of course, in walks Kane, in full wrestling gear, fire mask and all. Considering that the rest of the people there were normal, everyday folks, in plain clothes, Daniel Bryan included, it was especially surreal to see Kane walk in, in his full garb. Then again, the idea of Kane showing up in civilian clothes would be even stranger. Does this mean that Kane has a cell phone? That he texts people? What’s his data plan? Can you think of him dealing with AT&T customer service? Like if he gets put on hold too many times he just makes fire shoot out of the speaker on their side of the phone? Or worse, does he drunkenly sext AJ? I bet they’d have really weird booty calls.

I’m liking Heath Slater more and more each week. I’m hating Santino more and more every time I see him. Their match was pretty incidental. The crowd even chanted BORING at one point. The only highlight, if you could call it that, was seeing The Cobra react to Aksana showing up, with random “sexy” saxophone music to accompany her. The Cobra then attacks Heath Slater, and Santino pins Slater for the win, with the Cobra keeping its “eyes” on Aksana.

The entire concept of the Cobra being “horny” for Aksana, is just TOO over the top weird for me, because it just makes me think that Santino is either A.) possessed ala Idle Hands by cobra demons, and his limbs really are independent of his own free will, or B.) he’s got the strangest form of Dr. Strangelove Hand Syndrome, or C.) He’s just an insane person, and really needs help. No matter what way you put it, the Cobra is stupid. It always is stupid. It always has been. It always will be. It’s the Bret Hart of stupid gimmicks. Take it away Punk!

After Funkasaurus and Sin Cara’s lengthy intros, Damien Sandow comes out, and announces that he has finally found a colleague of his that he can have an intelligent conversation with, and of course it’s Cody Rhodes. The two of them make their way down the ramp, making an excellent job of showcasing their chemistry together as a team, and their insults towards Funkasaurus and Sin Cara all worked really well, and for the first time in a long time, I was excited to see the dynamic between two former single competitors, as a tag team.

Unfortunately, the match wasn’t really long enough to see them do anything together, or give them a chance to show us if their obvious and immediate character chemistry, worked in ring, but they’re definitely a team I’d look forward to seeing work together again, which is more than I can say for most of the singles-to-tag team teams. Basically, Funkasaurus managed to stomp down Cody Rhodes, while Sin Cara isolated Damien Sandow from hitting Funkasaurus’ magical weak spot (aka the knee), and Funkasaurus picked up the win after a huge splash. Funkasaurus and Sin Cara are an interesting duo together, in that they’re the exact opposite end of the spectrum, from Sandow and Rhodes, in terms of my interest in them working together. While I love Sandow and always appreciate more and more Cody Rhodes, I find myself increasingly disliking Funkasaurus and Sin Cara each time I see them. They’re the bizarro world opposites of each other in that way for me.

Back again to the third and final Anger Management video package, we see Kane being asked to share his feelings with the group. He is asked to take off his mask, and complies. When asked to share, he goes on to give the most hilarious, and frigging epic recall of his entire characters history, which when compiled altogether that way, is so absurd, it’s comedy genius. He even at one point gets meta and references how his motives for inexplicably torturing Pete Rose are entirely unexplained. The whole thing had me dying with laughter, simply that everything he said actually happened, and seeing the WWE reference continuity in this way, was so brilliant and funny. If the WWE wants to become more continuity conscious, I have no problem with them doing it this way. Refer to it, admit it’s kinda silly, but hold onto it, rather than ignore it. Plus, seeing Kane talk about his past relationships will never not be a laugh riot.

Kofi Kingston and R-Truth come out, and Kofi heads over to take commentary for the duration of the match. Why? Because I guess R-Truth and him are super-duper best friends now, and can never have matches without the other being present. I know they’re trying hard to get them over as an actual tag team, but when they’re STILL both referred to by their full names, and you know they had relatively long singles careers, it’s hard to accept them, because man, they STILL don’t have any chemistry. What was great though, was seeing Daniel Bryan enter the ring, making his entrance, trying to control himself, and only silently saying “no, no, no”, to himself, rather than his angry, defiant NO’s to the crowd. Not only that, he fist bumped R-Truth to begin the match! After a few minutes in, he even attempted to fist bump Little Jimmy, signifying either his true descent into madness, or his ability to overcome hardship and control himself. Or both.

After a minute or so of wrestling, their match spills to the outside of the ring, where R-Truth picks up a mic, and starts speaking to Little Jimmy. He answers Little Jimmy’s questions by saying YES over and over, which awakens the (American) dragon inside Daniel Bryan. Daniel Bryan starts losing it, and scream NO at the audience until he is counted out. He then realizes to his horror, he’s lost the match, when he sees Kofi congratulate Truth on his win. Bryan then violently starts kicking the steps to the ring, and parades around screaming NO. Try as he might, he just can’t escape his catchphr- I mean anger. Hey, if this whole Anger Management angle gets us the calm, cool, collected Daniel Bryan back, or god willing, the amazing WWE version of Heel Bryan Danielson, like he was for a few months post MITB 2011 and Pre-YES YES YES, I’m all for it.

Like these guys!

Triple H finally comes out to talk about his Summerslam match and whether or not he’ll be quitting/retiring/whatever. I’m so sick of talking about Triple H, so I’ll keep this as brief as possible. Triple H comes, fake cast on and everything, to a pretty big cheer from the crowd (ugh), and says, in a nutshell, that he’ll be retiring. He says it in the most longwinded fashion possible.

Dude, you let your own hubris ruin yourself by challenging a stupid human wrecking ball with a flat top. You’re the one who demanded the referee ignore the rules, and you’re the one who goaded him into even having the match in the first place, when Brock and Paul Heyman both warned you repeatedly for your stupid actions, saying that you”d get destroyed, and you did. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Just retire forever. Work behind the scenes. Hire more sucky mediocre talent like Sin Cara. Whatever. Just get your stupid wrinkled brow and ponytail off my television, and stay off. Please. Accept this dumb crowds applause and goodbye pop, which you were hoping for, but didn’t get, at Summerslam. Goodbye forever Triple H.

After that horribly long pill to swallow, we’re treated to Dolph Ziggler tricking the audience by coming out to Jericho’s music. He then says Jericho is gone forever, and walks to the ring. ADR makes his usual entrance. Between these two guys, I always love to them see in the ring, and whichever of them become the new WHC champion, I’m fine with. ADR is the #1 Contender, but Ziggler still has his MITB contract, so this is potentially setting up a future feud between them. Of course, Randy Orton still exists, so blaeaaeeegghhh. Also, Sheamus.

This is another example of the singles competitors being forced into tag teams, that just doesn’t work again. Tag Team matches can BE amazing, when your teams actually have chemistry, a move set that complements each other, and maybe even a good gimmick or team name. But watching these guys, all struggle to make their spots work, comes off as rushed, forced, and worst of all, boring. Actually, the worst thing was Sheamus and Orton, who both supposed to be faces, cheating to win. Blatantly, openly, cheating. The way HEELS are supposed to. Why they’re considered faces boggles my mind, and I hate it. I hate them both.

Hey, any time I can see Zack Ryder on Raw, I’m happy. Same with David Otunga, and frankly, they’re two talents who could use more time in ring, period. Also, seeing Kane come out, simply to sit down at the announcer’s table, only to stay silent, despite Michael Cole badgering him with questions the entire time. After Zack Ryder lands his finisher, he wins the match. Kane then stands up, immediately goes to attack Ryder, and even clasps his hand around his neck, but relents, and instead chokeslams Otunga. Ryder leaves holding his throat, and Michael Cole starts saying that perhaps this is progress for Kane, since he’d normally attack both of them. I think he’s just trying to get at AJ again, and this is his way of showing commitment? Maybe that makes sense to crazy people. *shudder*

The match between Lawler and Punk is announced as a Steel Cage match, which made me happy, since that’s what I voted for on twitter. Shortly after, AJ comes out to announce that Punk will be defending his title at Night Of Champions against John Cena. Seriously? Goddammit AJ, Y U DO THIS TO ME?

So this whole match was one big exercise in making Jerry Lawler look like he’s still a viable wrestler. From the opening “first shot” that Punk let Lawler have, to Punk getting bloodied by Lawler mid match. After letting us all pretend that Lawler can still wrestle for a few minutes, Punk busts out the Anaconda Vice, and wins. After the match, he grabs a chain from under the ring, and chains himself in the cage with Lawler, puts him in a headlock, and demands he admit that Punk is the best in the world. Lawler refuses, and Punk starts beating on him relentlessly. That being his cue, Cena runs out to save Lawler. He’s unable to open the chained door, and demands they raise the cage. He stands outside, demanding Punk stop, utterly helpless to defend Lawler, all the while Punk batters Lawler with multiple knees to the head, while screaming he is the best wrestler over and over. The cage raises, and Cena jumps in the ring, and runs to Lawler’s aid. Punk walks out, championship belt on his shoulders, triumphant in his victory, while Cena and referee officials stand by Lawler’s side, who is now apparently mortally wounded. Or dead. I hope.

In all, this is a finish to the show that indicates two things. #1, this really IS the final heel turn for Punk, because all the signs are there. Haircut? Check. Constantly shouting he’s the best, regardless of whether he is or not. (Bryan Danielson is, but in WWE, Punk is, so sure.) Check. And of course, attacking a “defenseless” announcer is always a bad thing, unless you’re John Cena and the announcer is Michael Cole. So because of weird double standards, and the general idiocy of the WWE Universe, you’ve got a crowd of people jeering CM Punk for attacking a guy in a match he asked for, for disrespecting him repeatedly, unfairly, and with no provocation. I don’t see how Punk isn’t deserving of respect, or isn’t the WWE Best In The World, because if we’re to presume for a moment, that the WWE Championship is supposed to mean anything, it’s that you’re the BEST WRESTLER in the company. And if WWE is the LEADING Wrestling promotion IN THE WORLD, then logically, this has to mean that you are the BEST IN THE WORLD. You could debate if Punk really is, in shoot terms and ability, but kayfabe, of COURSE he is. He has to be, by definition. John Cena showing up and saying that Punk’s actions are way over the line, are at the best, stupid, and at worst, hypocritical AND stupid.

Screw this. I’m outta here, biotches.

But, also, this is probably the last time I can realistically, and logically say that Punk is no longer a tweener, when he’s so clearly being portrayed as the villain now. I’m not saying his actions are indefensible, far from it. He’s not on the level of, oh let’s say, Sheamus, because everything Punk does is consistent with what a tweener or heel would do, and that’s fine, because he’s supposed to be. Heel Punk is good Punk. Anything Sheamus is bad Sheamus, same thing with Cena. If there’s one big thing that WWE needs to fix, it’s having their heels and faces act consistently, with what heels and faces are supposed to do, instead of this weird reverse bullshit where faces act like heels and are cheered for it, and heels act realistically and are booed for it forever. It makes me want to rip my eyeballs out and dunk them in sulfuric acid.

Anyhow, hopefully Jerry Lawler is dead, because he’s a bad announcer. I’m sick of his dumb propagandistic mark ass bullshit.

Monday Night Raw Recap & Review 7/2/12

Tonight’s Raw opens with the announcement that Teddy Long will be the GM. Which doesn’t bode well for tonight’s show, but I accepted that it was inevitable. John Cena enters the ring while promos for Money In The Bank are mentioned. Cena then starts talking about the ending of last weeks show, where he got beaten by Jericho and then attacked by Big Show. He goes on to talk again about how that loss has only motivated him to Try Harder™ and to Never Give Up™ and all the usual boring Cena rhetoric that he spouts. Thankfully, he is interrupted by Daniel Bryan, who comes out and reminds us of his MITB match with CM Punk.  CM Punk comes out, and they all make points about the potential outcomes of MITB, with John Cena essentially being the winner as a given, because he’s John Cena. This really hurts the value of that PPV since they’re already talking about Cena as the winner, and undermines the whole point of that match. Why have a match if everyone involved basically admits that John Cena is going to win? What’s the point other than showing us yet again that the scales are tipped in his favor at all times?

Thankfully, the promo got better with CM Punk and Bryan playing off of each other and involving the crowd. If this storyline develops to include Cena, it could potentially make every single fan in the audience go hoarse between “Yes”, “No” and “Let’s go Cena/Cena Sucks” chants. Not one to be out of the spotlight, Jericho then enters, and puts in his 2 cents. He comes out, and reminds us all that between the four of them, Jericho is one of the best catchphrase makers of all time. He then runs through all of his catchphrases that he’s had over the years, and says that he plans to win the match, and not let Cena cruise his way to a title shot. Then Kane and Big Show enter one after another, both to re-enforce the idea that they plan to win the match. They then get into a big brawl, and Show comes out on top, ostensibly as the victor. It’s an attempt to rectify the foregone conclusion that Cena will win, but really, the damage is done. They’re clearly trying to set up the many possible storylines that could develop between Punk/Bryan/Show/Cena/Jericho/Kane, but WWE is anything if predictable, and it’ll probably end up being a Punk/Cena match we’ll get in the future.

This is a strange match up. I don’t quite get the pairings other than the Tag Team champions against the #1 contenders The Primetime Players. They’ve developed all of the feuds in previous shows, specifically Smackdown, but as for the actual reasons they’re booked against each other, I’m drawing a blank. Why are Otunga and Cody Rhodes a team? No clue. Why are Santino and Christian buddies? Does holding a championship title make you instant best friends? It’s not clear, but it’s building for their respective matches at MITB.  8 man tag-team matches are never something I’ve been too big a fan of. Most of the time it’s unbalanced, and everyone involved is just used sparingly until the lot of them find some way to get hurt and then the good/bad guys win.

I had a hard time paying attention to the match because A, It was kinda boring, and B, AW’s voice was incredibly, ridiculously loud. I don’t know if he had a direct mic hooked up, but the dude was louder than Michael Cole, Jerry Lawler and the audience combined. The guys voice boomed like he was Odin, and was announcing Ragnarok to all the peoples of Earth. Or maybe he temporarily siphoned the powers of Blackbolt, and his whispers don’t move mountains but his words can be heard clearly no matter where you are in the world. Ok, so maybe I’m exaggerating, but the dude was crazy loud.  Eventually, AW leads the Primetime Players away, because them leaving matches seems to be their thing now. Then Cody Rhodes exits too,  leaving David Otunga alone with the rest of the other team. Brodus Clay then enters, and throws Otunga back into the ring to be Cobra’d by Santino. After Santino wins the match, they all take turns needlessly beating on Otunga. After ruthlessly destroying him, they all start dancing to Funkasaurus’ music, as little kids enter the ring. Meanwhile, Otunga writhes in agony. Funk is on a roll!

We then cut to Teddy Long dancing alone inside his dressing room, watching the match, which is exactly what I always thought he did, and it was hilarious to see my suspicions confirmed. Alberto Del Rio walks in, and begs for a title match, destiny, et all. Teddy informs him that the Board of Directors have made him the #1 contender, and given him a match at MITB, but that Teddy has given Del Rio a match tonight, and it’ll be a Teddy Long surprise, which I hope to god isn’t a sexual euphemism. Knowing Teddy Long, the Teddy Surprise is the same damn thing he always does, and is just a tag team match. Man, I really want Vickie back as GM, at least she was creative.

I remember watching this training montage between Vince McMahon and Shane. It was a fairly funny parody of Rocky and all the boxing movie/training montages you’ve ever seen. I loved seeing Vince becoming motivated to bulk up by his pure hatred of Stone Cold alone. I know a thing or two about hating things, and it’s inspiring to think that if you just hate someone or something enough, you can accomplish your goals, no matter how ridiculous, improbable, and pointless. Vince McMahon was a probably the best villainous character in the history of WWE, and boy, I sure do miss him. On a side note, Stephanie McMahon has aged REALLY well. She looks 10x hotter than I remember her being in the Attitude era. Lordy.

Teddy’s surprise turns out to not be a tag team match, but actually Del Rio matched up against Sin Cara. I’m actually surprised these guys haven’t wrestled before, because they’re both of luchador backgrounds. Del Rio actually makes quick work of Sin Cara, interrupting his ostentatious and stupid intro sequence, and then puts him in a cross armbreaker, ending the match before it starts. I like Alberto Del Rio crushing people. I like him winning cleanly, and I like him straight up being BETTER than other wrestlers who are forced on us. His talent is relatively underutilized, and dammit, he needs to have more promos, and we need to see more Ricardo Rodriguez actually wrestling. #Rudo forever.

After that match, we cut backstage to AJ and Daniel Bryan, who shows up with a rose in hand, trying to apologize to her for how he treated her in the past, saying he always cared about her. She calls him on his BS, says she sees through his transparent attempt to curry her favor for his match at MITB, and then bites off the head of the rose he gave her. No really, she bites off the head of the rose. Every week I keep wondering how they’re going to build on AJ’s “crazy chick” character angle, and every week she keeps doing something to up the ante, or at the very least, continue it in a believable fashion. What’s next? Does she start tearing up turnbuckles and eating chunks of the foam inside? Whatever they do, i’m enjoying it. Her character is fascinating right now, and she’s bringing a sliver of hope and legitimacy to the Diva’s division. Hopefully her becoming popular will continue this, and make it a trend. I know I want to see more scantily clad, attractive women actually wrestling competently, don’t you?

Then we return to the old recap of the HHH/Paul Heyman/Brock Lesnar storyline, where we see HHH fail over and over at mind games or understanding basic assault charges. Tonight we were told we’d get a response to HHH’s proposition of a match to settle things at Summerslam. Paul Heyman shows up VIA satellite, and tells us that the decision will actually be made, face to face, at the 1000th episode of Raw. He continues to sum up his impressions of HHH’s intentions for the match between Lesnar and HHH. He basically says that this match will provide a reason for HHH to throw in the towel and become a CEO/COO/Whatever full-time, and cap off his career as being the “last of his kind”, or the “end of an era”, as he’s put it before. I think Heyman is mostly right, but I also think HHH is just kind of dumb, and doesn’t think things through in terms other than “I’m gonna beat you up and then that’ll be that”. Which I guess makes sense, since as a wrestler turned corporate executive, that’s about the only logic he’d apply to any transgression or disagreement he’d ever have, professional or otherwise. I’m guessing if a plumber overcharges HHH for 3 hours work, HHH pedigrees him into his bathroom tile and demands a price reduction, or sliding scale  payment plan. If his cook makes him undercooked pasta, he scalds him with the boiling pasta water and demands perfectly al dente ravioli. HHH is that guy who went to the club and thought it was cool to give the bouncers shit, tried to fight them, and was confused when he wasn’t let back in next week.

I can’t think of the last time I saw an inter-gender Tag Team match, but holy crap how much does Raw reek of Teddy Long as GM so far? One hour in, and the only two real matches (ADR vs Sin Cara doesn’t count) are both Tag Team matches. Dude, seriously? We get it. You love tag teams. Please bring back John Laurinaitis, WWE Board of Directors, I’m begging you. We’ve seen Dolph Ziggler vs Sheamus a few times now, and these guys are definitely learning to make each others moves look pretty good. They work together well,  Sheamus’ moves look good on Ziggler, and Ziggler is pretty great at getting tweener heat from audiences. Eventually Dolph dodges a brogue kick and tags in Vickie.  AJ quickly pins her, then grabs a mic and  YES YES YES’s her way out of the ring. She’s then seen backstage looking for CM Punk, and catches him on the phone. After Punk doesn’t answer her immediately about who he’s talking to, she starts to go Overly-Possesive Girlfriend on him again, asking if he saw her match. He rebuffs her saying he was on the phone the whole time with his sister, and she starts to LOSE IT, and somehow manages to be crazy, creepy, and pitiful at the same time. Punk just shrugs and stands there, I laugh well through the entire commercial break, and the beat goes on.

Back from the break, Heath Slater is back, about to be jobbed to some former WWE Legend. They show a quick recap of all his previous losses, with bonus Three Stooges noises for every injury he took. He protests it, and starts saying how he’s not a clown. Yeah you guessed it,  Doink The Clown then enters the ring, looking just as terrifying as I remember.  Actually, he’s sort of dressed like a creepy clown version of Benjamin Franklin, and that thought alone will make my dreams really scary for a week at least. So they trade moves back and forth for a while, until shocker of shockers, Slater beats Doink! Then we’re treated to a really great surprise, and Diamond Dallas Frickin’ Page shows up, to the cheers of the crowd and me at home. He then drops a Diamond Cutter on Slater, and everyone loses their damn minds.  I miss DDP, he should come back and put the Diamond Cutter on some chump every week, until he gets to Randy Orton. Then we’d get 10 minutes of them just countering each others identical finishers until one of them decides to give up. They’d be the unstoppable force and immovable object of wrestlers whose finishers come “out of NOWHERE”.

So let’s forget that these two were tag team champions and best friends as recently as a year ago, and focus on the particulars of this match. It’s a No-DQ match between them, essentially to build up the tension for their match at MITB. The both of them are considered “Monsters” now, and the both of them are relatively big men, whose main thing is being strong and feared. So their match is just an exercise in big slow dudes moving slowly and attempting moves that seem a bit too much for both of them. Big Show does a good job of making short work of Kane, further establishing him as a dominant force in the WWE. The match itself wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad either. Aside from the use of a chair though, I don’t get why it was No-DQ. I guess they needed to sell the idea that Kane was only barely beaten by Big Show, but to be honest, it didn’t do Kane any kind of favor with his portrayal as an effective wrestler. Unless he has someone quick to complement his move set, he seems really slow and relatively weak.

Then we cut to Teddy Long and Eve, who I had forgotten about entirely, but good lord does she look great in red, white and blue. Even though Eve is pretty, she’s still better as a backstage character than wrestler. Her character is one of the WWE female staples, that being: The Bitch. I’m not sure what her absence in the WWE was for, kayfabe or otherwise, but her return post-Laurinaitis is a bit superfluous. Is she still in a position of power? It’s something I’ll just have to guess at in continuing weeks. I’m guessing right now, her purpose is for us to just remember her, which seems apt, as that’s all Teddy seems to think, as he slaps a name tag on her. That’s his idea of a revenge for being made to wear a name tag and maids dress by the way.

Like dude, if you’re the GM, and somebody ridiculed you for weeks on end, FIRE THEM. But I digress, as we see Eve approach AJ. Eve makes fun of AJ, calling her a little girl and all those typical insults an older, jealous woman makes of a younger, hotter, more talented woman than themselves. AJ then goes 2-0 tonight, and calls Eve on all of her BS, and rightly accuses Eve of being a brown noser with nobody to brown nose, and no attention to gain from anyone. AJ then says she’ll show her and everyone else,  just how to get attention. I’m presuming she means she’ll win another match, or challenge Eve to a fight, but maybe it’ll mean she’ll actually wrestle women of equal wrestling ability and create a viable women’s division? Either that or she’ll look directly into the camera and profess her love for me. Both would blow my mind equally at this point.

So every time I see Tyson Kidd on Raw, I make a game with myself, where I take a shot. Of course, this has never happened until last week, and usually my shot of alcohol gets all full of lint,  excess cat hair and dead bugs from sitting so damn long. But this last month I’ve taken that shot, and tonight will be the second time. I also have a secondary rule, where if I see Tyson Kidd win a match, I finish the bottle of booze right then and there. The third rule I have, is if Tyson Kidd wins that match in under a minute, I drink all of the booze in the house. So tonight, after seeing Kidd defeat Tensai in under a minute, I drank every last drop of Jameson, Jager and Vodka I had. Strangely, it hasn’t kicked in yet ohwaitthereitgoes ohsfsnj dk lorfd tenzai ish fat urnd gonba habe wressle AJ I LOVE YOIIII ohhbbbb

Ahem.

Backstage, we see Jericho preparing for his match, and Daniel Bryan walks in wearing his jacket. They then argue about whose jacket is better (no really), and then decide that they must embarrass John Cena tonight. Daniel Bryan agrees with his catchphrase, which Jericho detests. Bryan continues Yes-ing, while Jericho continues his catchphrase, “Never EEEEEVER a-gain”,  in a catchphrase-off that I can only describe as being as funny as it is weird. I know in reality they both stop the camera cuts away, but man how great would it be if they only communicated to each other in catch phrases? Just have the both of them come out and represent the apotheosis of wrestling heels, who say their catchphrase, destroy people, and then leave. Jericho already did the opposite of this when he returned, and didn’t say a damn word for 3 weeks straight, gaining heat off of everybody who wanted him to come back face. Daniel Bryan has pretty much built up his whole heel turn around his catchphrase, and already pretty much communicates solely in catchphrases, so why not try it out for a month? Make them a tag team called The Catchphrase Kings, and I’ll love you forever WWE. Returning from the break, Tyson Kidd gets attacked by Tensai in the locker room, because Tensai is a big fat whiny loser baby man. Then, we finally get to the main event of the night.

So yeah, our main event is, surprise, a tag team match. Teddy Long, you are the worst. Seriously.

The name tag is a photoshop, but it’s what you deserved Teddy.

Along with nearly every single match tonight being a tag team match, this Raw suffers from pre-PPV syndrome hard. Sometimes a PPV is the culmination of storylines and matches that occur naturally, and provide either an endpoint or a bullet point in a feud between wrestlers, but sometimes the case is like tonight, where the story and its booking are all there to serve the PPV, rather than the PPV  serve the story and the booking. I had a hard time thinking why everyone was wrestling tonight, other than “Well, they will be at the PPV”. Not that I mind seeing Jericho, Bryan and Punk in a match together, but the reason for them being in a match with Cena is tenuous at best, and it only serves to undermine the previous feud that Punk and Cena had last year, as we saw them earlier just throw away all their history literally in a handshake. You could argue that it’s a noble thing to do between two faces, but it’s boring for me, and doesn’t adhere to Punk’s devil-may-care attitude, and comes off as fake to me, in a really wrong way.

All that being said, when you have so much good talent in the ring, it’s hard to have a boring match. Jericho and Daniel Bryan actually make a surprisingly good team, and do a great job of isolating Cena from his partner. But tonight, Robo-Cena is in full effect, and despite Jericho and Bryan really hitting him hard, he continues to kick out, and slowly build momentum, until he gets the tag to Punk. Punk jumps in and turns the momentum of the match,  and Jericho and Cena battle outside the ring,  disappearing up stage. Bryan gets a huge kick on Punk, and it looks like he was about to win cleanly for the second week in a row against Punk, until Punk counters and gets a huge superplex off the top rope. AJ then shows up, (duh), and Bryan starts to get a lead on Punk. AJ then paces around the ring, looking for something under the ring, until she pulls out a table. She carefully sets it up, and spends a long amount of time considering the table, slowly climbing the to the top of the turn buckle. It looks like she’s about to jump onto the table, although I’m clueless as to why, when suddenly Daniel Bryan jumps out of the ring, and pleads with her to not jump. CM Punk then comes up, to also convince her to not jump, and she kisses Punk. He stands there confused for a moment, and she shoves him into Daniel Bryan, and they both crash through the table. AJ starts Yes-ing, and we end on a shot of Bryan and Punk writhing in mutual confusion and agony.

It seems AJ has picked CM Punk as her object of affection, but is quick to jump to anger if ignored. Pushing Punk through that table is her way of putting you in the dog house, so to speak. The real thing to ponder is, why they both acted as if her jumping 4 feet onto a folding table was tantamount to a suicide attempt. Guys, she’s a trained wrestler remember? If she wants to jump through a table, let her jump. I’m sure she knows how to take a bump. The better ending would have been she jumps through the table, goes all Mick Foley and starts rolling around in the smashed bits of table, smiling in pleasure/pain, and we end as both Punk and Bryan stare in horror.

Also, what the hell happened to Cena and Jericho? Are they still fighting backstage? Do they just get out of camera shot and then go hit the showers and play grab ass? Maybe they’re secretly working together and the second they get backstage they high-five and go bro it out in the green room, eating chips and making fun of Kane. Or just maybe, they’re still  back there, fighting each other during every moment they’re not on camera, and they’re waiting for AW to summon Odin with his God-Voice, and they shall be the Valkyries that bring about Ragnarok. That’d be better than the non-ending we got on Raw tonight. Even my Mom was asking if that was it, and she usually doesn’t even pay even half-attention to Raw at all.

So let me point some things out to you. If the WWE Universe ever gets to pick who the new GM of Raw and Smackdown is, for the love of god, please don’t pick Teddy. On a 2 hour show that had 7 matches, four of them were singles matches that ended in quick squashes in under 2 minutes, and everything else was long, boring tag team matches, with a main event that didn’t even have a real ending. The dude is TERRIBLE at his job, and literally anyone else is better than him. So please, don’t support Teddy. He is a bad GM.  Vote for Vickie, she may be annoying, but she can at least book an entertaining show.

Stick to what you know Teddy. RIP People Power.

WWE: Extreme Rules 2011 – Outcome Predictions

There’s nothing better than trying to predict the outcome of a predetermined sporting event. But that is exactly what I’m going to do before this Sunday’s Pay Per View event.

Randy Orton vs CM Punk – Last Man Standing

This feud has been ongoing for way too long for them to not end it tonight. Last Man Standing usually means someone is getting their ass kicked definitively, so I’m fully expecting CM Punk to get his ass handed to him once and for all, so Orton can solidify his role as main attraction on Smackdown. If you think about it they are on separate shows and the feud is really run it’s course. It’s time to end it.

WINNER: Randy Orton

Jerry Lawler/Jim Ross vs Michael Cole/Jack Swagger
Country whipping match

I’m not exactly sure what a whipping match is except that people will be whipped. In this tag match, unless Cole is getting beat into a coma I could care less about. The Lawler/Cole feud is about as drawn out and old as the Orton/Punk feud, except with less entertainment. Michael Cole was funny to an extent in the beginning and I know we all need someone to hate, but let’s leave that to the wrestlers and not the commentators. This thing has been going for close to a year it seems like, and Cole is just downright annoying to the point where I almost hate watching Raw because he disrupts it so badly. And he says everything three to four times over in the ring which is very annoying when you can hear him clear as day.

Winners: Jerry Lawler and Jim Ross (hopefully)

Alberto Del Rio vs Christian

Ladder Match for the World Heavyweight Championship

With the World Heavyweight belt vacant, Del Rio and Edge’s best buddy Christian will be duking it out in a ladder match to decide who the next champ will be. You might think with Christian being the master of ladder matches, Edge’s friend and all around likable guy, that he would be the one to win it. But I have to disagree because it seems like they’ve been all about Alberto Del Rio for quite some time, building him up over the course of last year as a major contender and hated heel. It all culminated in Del Rio’s Royal Rumble win and eventual championship match against Edge. Then he lost to Edge at Wrestlemania… didn’t see that one coming.

It’s pretty evident they found out about Edge’s health woes and need to retire just before Wrestlemania 27. They weren’t going to have him lose in his last match ever, so they just delayed Del Rio’s victory until now with the title vacant. Edge gets to retire a champion and Del Rio gets to win the title finally and score tons of guest appearences on Univision. Everybody wins!

Winner: Alberto Del Rio

Rey Mysterio vs Cody Rhodes – Falls Count Anywhere

This match is yet another long, drawn out feud that has run it’s course. Like a lot of the other ones it was fun at first but has definitely overstayed it’s welcome. I like what they did to Cody Rhodes, switching from pretty boy to masked freak. (even though it’s pretty apparent that not much was wrong with his face.) I see no reason for Cody to win this one. He’s a heel that is narrowly on the jobber level.

WINNER: Rey Mysterio

The Miz vs John Cena vs John Morrison

Steel Cage Triple Threat Match

The words Triple, Threat, Steel, Cage and Match should fill any wrestling spectator with glee. But for some reason I’m not all that excited for this match. It could be that two of the participants were involved in this past Wrestlemania’s worst main event in the history of the WWE. John Cena and the Miz = boring. So you’d then think I’d be rooting for John Morrison, but I’m not. Seriously? A guy wearing sunglasses with the worst tan ever, calling himself the Prince of Parkour? There’s no one to root for period in this one. There should be a triple disqualification that somehow makes the title vacant. But that won’t happen, so I have a feeling that the Miz will still hang onto the belt for this one. Of course it will be a cheap bullshit win, because they haven’t wrote the monkey faced turd of a champion winning the old fashioned way. I’m thinking R Truth will interfere to blow it for Morrison and win it for Miz.

WINNER: The Miz

Well those are my two cents. I’m hoping this pay per view will at least be mildly entertaining but with all the rehashed replay matches they have scheduled make me skeptical. I’m pretty sure almost everyone of these matches except the Del Rio one occured in one form or another at Wrestlemania 27.

Either way comment below and let us in on your own predictions!

WWE Monday Night Raw Review: Wrestlemania 27 Aftermath

Well here we stand, the night after Wrestlemania. Whether you loved it or hated it, there were good and bad things to come of it. One of the good things was evident right at the beginning of Raw with Jim Ross commentating alongside the King Jerry Lawler, as it should be. I’m not too sure if I could handle listening to the phony ass Michael Cole sitting in his glass box for another night. I can handle two commentators and one being a little biased towards one wrestler, but it should at least have some thought put into it. It shouldn’t just be Cole babbling in favor of a heel just because Lawler favors the opposite wrestler. Of course we shouldn’t expect not to see Cole anymore, because Ross brings up a rumor to Lawler of Cole being at Raw and supposedly wanting a match. Didn’t we suffer through that last night?

Probably the most decent match at Wrestlemania 27

The first person to come out and speak at the beginning of Raw was surprisingly not the Miz to gloat about another one of his assisted title defenses, but it was Triple H. He came out to speak about how unbelievable his match against the Undertaker was last night and even went so far as to thank the “Dead Man” for one of the best matches of his life. He also adds that when the Undertaker returns (he was carried out by stretcher last night) that he’ll be waiting. So does this mean that we will see another Undertaker injury hiatus? And that the next Wrestlemania will be Triple H and the Taker again?

 

Vintage Scum-Bag Cole

In the next segement we are unfortunately subjected to the moronic Michael Cole coming out to challenge Jerry Lawler to a rematch which Lawler happily agrees to and promptly enters the ring. I’m thinking, why do we have to see the same thing we saw at Wrestlemania last night? But then it turns out Cole is talking about Lawler having a rematch with Jack Swagger whom he fought last Raw. Wow… even better we get to see a freakin’ match from before Wrestlemania. Lame. The match goes on for a short time with Lawler getting the upper hand (he still has the moves!) until Cole interferes long enough for Swagger to get Lawler into the ankle lock submission hold to which Lawler taps out. But the call is reversed because Swagger won’t break the hold after the bell. This of course angers Cole who proceeds to spray JR with a bottle of barbeque sauce until Ross goes after him. I really really want Michael Cole to go away. Unfortunately he is back on the commentator scene when Raw resumes from commercial. From barbeque sauce to weak sauce.

“IN THE FACE!”

Thank God that his tirade about Ross ends as Randy Orton’s theme music blares throughout the arena, followed by the entrance of his tag team partner Rey Mysterio. They are set to wrestle in yet another rehash of their opponents from last night: CM Punk and Cody Rhodes. Yawn. Aside from it being the same matchups from last night, it is interesting to see Orton and his former Legacy underling Cody Rhodes going at it again. And I like the mismatched pairing of Orton and Mysterio, because they are polar opposites but both extremely talented in their own way. After a match lasting through two commercial breaks, Orton sets Rhodes up for a 619 from Mysterio which staggers him…straight into a waiting RKO from the Viper. Match over as CM Punk runs away from the ring.

A quick in between matches: Stone Cold Steve Austin is certainly in the building, congratulating a passing Triple H for one helluva match last night. Also there was a promo for the imminent arrival of luchador Sin Cara who was recently acquired by the WWE. It will be interesting indeed to see what he brings to the table.

“And so he did.”

As Raw returns we are welcomed back with Austin coming out to the ring. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like Austin will do any ass whooping as he brings out the cast of Tough Enough to the ring to make introductions. (Austin and Booker T are both on Tough Enough if you didn’t know) None of them really stood out to me except one. Maybe the guy with the afro, but that was just because he had an afro. The other one that stood out was Rima Fakih, obviously because she is super hot and a Michigan native where I hail from. I would absolutely be loving it if she was the next Diva. The Miz, the worst WWE champion since Sheamus, interrupts the whole thing with his butt buddy Alex Reiley. He proceeds to talk down to the Tough Enough kids and promptly challenging Austin to a match. Austin agrees as the ring clears out, but instead of Miz attacking A-Rei does. It was pretty satisfying to see Austin back in action to stomp Alex Reiley’s ass for a couple minutes. Afterwards Austin has a beer with the Tough Enough crew and throws a couple into Cole’s glass turd box to get him wet.

Rima Fakih – Former Miss USA

Even though I’m not a big fan of Alberto Del Rio, it is refreshing to see an original match as he faces off against Evan Bourne. Del Rio was curiously absent his car and usual grinning face as he came out for the match. It’s a typical Evan Bourne match where the little fella is outgunned by his almost always bigger opponent. He manages to execute one high flying maneuver but misses and ends getting put into the crossover submission. Chalk one up for Del Rio, but if he wants to get back on the road to credibility he needs to fight someone a little more formidable than Bourne. And also he needs to get a new car.

Del Rio in Full Spanish Soap Opera Mode

When we returned from a commercial break I nearly gagged on my water hearing Vicki Guerrero’s voice echoing throughout the arena. Apparently we get a matchup of Vicky and Dolph Zigler v.s. John Morrison and Trish Stratus. Almost the same matchup from Wrestlemania last night minus that strumpet Snooki. That should make me happy but I am nonetheless still completely uncaring about this matchup so I’ll keep it brief: Morrison and Stratus win and we all move on with our lives.

WARNING: VOMIT INDUCING

Next on the agenda is Sheamus, who’s match at Wrestlemania was not aired last night. So we are at least treated to a rematch for the United States Championship Belt, with Sheamus defending. I really couldn’t care less about Daniel Bryan. Everything about him is boring, from his look to his theme music. To me he is just not superstar material. Needless to say I was hoping for Sheamus to win and he did. I think he may have found his niche in the WWE with being the United States Champion, because he definitely wasn’t cutting it as WWE champion. Much like the Miz he never defended the title successfully without interference or douche-baggery. Perhaps they can somehow make the United States Championship a legitimate title, especially since the aforementioned Sin Cara came out to stop Sheamus from pummeling Daniel Bryan some more after the match. I believe Sin Cara can definitely bring a little more excitement to the WWE and what it is desperately suffering from a lack of… something different. His super high flying manuever from the top ropes onto Sheamus outside of the ring was definitely impressive. Radical man….

Look out Mysterio… There’s a new masked Mexican in town.

Now to the finale that they have been going on and on about the whole show. “John Cena calls out The Rock”. Lord knows they needed a whole segment for this nonsense of the predictable walking talking cliche John Cena to come out and spew his slang riddled rhetoric. Cena did his typical, “I lost and congrats to my opponent” bit before calling out the Rock, who obliges with a stroll out to the ring. The Rock goes on for a few minutes about Cena and Cena even brings up Rock’s terrible movie “The Tooth Fairy” before coming out with the obvious challenge. The Rock vs John Cena. Even though I hate Cena, it would be a great match if these two went toe to toe. It obviously won’t happen on this Raw and not even in a pay per view this year… they are talking about Wrestlemania 28 next year. I admit I will have forgotten about this in about a month. So someone please remind me about it every now and then, because I’m sure the WWE won’t bombard us with it nearly every week! But it doesn’t end here, the Corre of stupidity decides to run out and ruin the moment before Cena and Rock can shake on it. They have the upper hand at first but are of course pummeled by two of the biggest superstars in the business. Cena and Rock finally shake on it, setting an extremely early stage for next year’s Wrestlemania 28.

“OH HERE WE GO! Next year that is…”

WWE Wrestlemania 27 Review: The Year of the Snooki

Wrestlemania officially came and went tonight. It sometimes sizzled, but most times fizzled. I watched it with my brother tonight, getting that nostalgic feeling watching it at times. And yes… we both know and have known for a very long time that wrestling is indeed fake. However, this is a tradition we do try to keep every year and it was for the most part very entertaining. Certain wrestlers we thought would emerge victorious did not in several matches, especially in the first match that we will start with.

Championship Match: Alberto Del Rio V.S. Edge

Surprisingly the first match of the night was for the World Heavyweight Championship belt that is usually retained by the champion on Smackdown, which is currently held by the Rated R Superstar Edge. His challenger… this year’s Royal Rumble winner Alberto Del Rrrrrrrriiiioooooo! And yes, he is a rich Mexican themed wrestler who drives out to every match in a Rolls-Royce. But down to business…

I thought for sure Del Rio was going to come out on top for this one. This guy has been built up on Smackdown for months now and it all culminated with a shocking win in the Royal Rumble. I knew for sure he wasn’t going to challenge the WWE Champion from Raw, so it was a given it would be a Del Rio/Edge matchup at Wrestlemania. What I didn’t bank on was Del Rio losing to Edge. I’m not so sure this will be the end of their feud nor the end of Del Rio as a contender, but one thing is for sure – Del Rio looked like a whiny little bitch after the match while Edge beat the crap out of his Rolls-Royce with a crowbar. I don’t know about you guys but I’d be intervening ASAP on someone smashing a car that nice.

Overall this was a pretty entertaining match, with little interference by those outside the ring by Del Rio’s ring announcer Ricardo and the rotund Brodus Clay. Plenty of spears and arm breakers to go around. Winner: Edge

Cody Rhodes v.s. Rey Mysterio

In this match we were able to see the Rhodes/Mysterio feud come to a head. You see, the once Dashing Cody Rhodes has recently had to wear a face mask to protect his face from further damage after reconstructive surgery. He needed the surgery, he claims, due to the devastating 619 Mysterio gave to him months ago. Apparently Rey Mysterio’s knee brace added a little more power to the infamous move.

One interesting moment was before the match began as Mysterio entered the arena wearing a Captain America styled outfit. I can only say at least he took off the ridiculous red gloves before the match started. A valiant effort Rey, but maybe you should lay off the superhero them.

The match itself wasn’t overly long, but filled with all the high-flying maneuvers that Rey Mysterio is famous for. The match took a ridiculous turn when Cody’s mask was removed (Interestingly I didn’t see any sign of facial reconstruction.) and used by Rey to headbutt him several times. Then to top it off, Cody used Rey’s own knee brace to pummel him and then finish the match with the Crossroads. Sorry little Rey, but maybe you can get some revenge on Raw tonight. Winner: Cody Rhodes

 

 

The Corre V.S. Kane, Big Show, Santino and Kofi

This match was a bit useless and thankfully short. Though it had plenty of superstars I normally enjoy, any match where the walking joke Santino leads them to a win is enough to make me puke. After starting the match, it instantly gets out of control once Big Show gets in to start destroying Heath Slater. After Ezekiel gets in to take out Big Show there is a flurry of specialty moves occurring left and right. Santino then does his patented Cobra strike to Heath Slater and Big Show finishes him off with a ham sized fist to the face, winning the match with a pinfall. I think the match lasted all of six minutes, so thanks for the throwaway match WWE. And also please fire Santino. Winners: Kane, Big Show, Santino and Kofi Kingston.

Losers x4

Randy Orton V.S. CM Punk

Straight Edge Scumbag

Another match with no title hanging in the balance, only a possible end to another long running feud between two fan favorite superstars. After all the skull kicking CM Punk and his Nexus minions have received from Randy’s foot, tonight was the night to end it all hopefully. The match was nothing special, but well paced and ending in true Randy Orton style…. with a mid-air RKO to end the match. Again, I am very pleased with the absence of all the outside interference that ruins the pay per view matches. Now maybe Randy Orton can get back into the race for the WWE Championship that has eluded him these past months. I can’t tell anymore if people want to see Randy as a hero or villain (Face or Heel). Personally I want to see him back at his twisted sadistic self, but against someone other than John Cena. Winner: Randy Orton

Orton loves kicking skulls…

Jerry Lawler V.S. Michael Cole

“Uhhh Derrrr…”

I couldn’t wait for this match because I’ve been aching to see Michael Cole get a real good beating because quite frankly I can’t freakin’ stand him. Hearing him drone on with obvious bias to the villains in each match was bad enough but then before the match we had to hear him even more on his trek to the ring. At least Stone Cold Steve Austin busted out on a four-wheeler to shut the little weasel up for a bit.

After Lawler comes out and some prodding to get Cole in the ring the match finally starts with Jack Swagger in Cole’s corner and Steve Austin as the special referee. Cole gets a cheap shot in on Lawler and beats on him for a bit until Lawler finally gets ahold of him. Swagger actually tries to throw in the towel to call the match off which Stone Cold promptly uses to wipe off the sweat from his bald head before giving Mr. Swagger a Stone Cold Stunner. Lawler proceeds to whoop on Cole until he taps out from an ankle lock submission hold. Cue applause and Austin and Lawler enjoy a few beers together in the ring before the general manager sends and e-mail announcement that commentator Josh Matthews reads to the audience.

It turns out the still “anonymous” general manager of Raw thought that Austin interfered too much on Lawler’s behalf and disqualifies him making Cole the actual winner. This must have been hard to announce given the fact that Michael Cole recently called Matthews a “faggot” over twitter. To make matters even worse in a stunning move (pun intended) Lawler throws Matthews in the ring to get a Stunner from Austin. Talk about killing the messenger. Inexplicably, Austin’s Tough Enough partner in crime Booker T leaves the commentators table to join Austin and Lawler in celebrating by doing his famous break dancing in the middle of the ring. Then, in what I thought was the funniest part of the night, Booker T begins to drink a beer offered to him by Austin before he is also given a Stone Cold Stunner. A huge geyser of spit out beer and Booker T on the ground follows with Austin smiling and saying something to the effect of – “I had to do it.” Vintage Austin. Official Winner: Michael Cole

Undertaker V.S. Triple H

“Nice hammer….”

This was the match that I think everyone including myself were waiting for and it was by far the best match of the night. Sure there weren’t any titles on the line or even a career long feud between the two. Triple H was just the next obvious choice to attempt breaking the Undertaker’s unbeaten Wrestlemania streak which at this point stood at 18-0. To make it even better this was a no holds barred, no disqualifications or count out match and these two superstars definitely took it to the limit.

They broke the spanish commentators’ table of course. They used the steel steps and a nice folding chair. They both executed their specialty moves, with Triple H using at least two Pedigrees on the Taker. But pin after pin neither of these wrestling behemoths would yield. In the coolest moment of the match, Triple H gave the Undertaker his own move: the tombstone piledriver. To add insult to injury, Triple H even pinned the Undertaker as he himself would but shockingly the phenom kicked out of the pin. Triple H finally resorted to going beneath the ring for his patented tool the trusty sledgehammer to finish things but was surprised by being locked into the Taker’s submission move the Hell’s Gate. After what seemed like an eternity Triple H finally gave several weakened taps of the hand to signal his surrender and now the record still stands…. 19-0. I have to admit I thought that Triple H might win the match and end the Undertaker’s streak but now I think the WWE will let him retire with the record intact, maybe after win number 20. Winner: The Undertaker

 

 

Snooki, Trish Stratus and John Morrison V.S. Laycool and Dolph Zigler

“I can haz cheezburger?”

This is actually a match that I couldn’t give a dead moose’s last crap about, because I hate Jersey Shore and everyone involved in it. Especially Snooki. But I will definitely let you know who won so we can stop wasting time with it. Snooki, Stratus and John Morrison won the match after we had to see the horrendous Snooki do a front flip and expose her jelly rolls to all. Thank you for that WWE. Winners: Who cares.

 

Main Event: Cena V.S. Miz (Champion)

 

This match was very much like the Jericho/Triple H follow up to the Hulk Hogan/Rock match-up at Wrestlemania 18; it’s a tough act to follow up. Try as this match might, it could not live up to the Undertaker-Triple H match that took place earlier in the night. It came down to the same stuff we see Cena and Miz doing nearly every Monday night and it just bored me. I fully expected Cena to win and when he didn’t I suppose that was the only surprise to come of it. I hate Cena but I definitely hate the Miz more so I was actually pulling for Cena to come out on top. The short match actually had a couple of surprising twists. Cena destroys Miz outside of the ring, at one point hurting himself too resulting in their joint count out. The title then stays in Miz’s hands. But wait, the Rock who is the host of this Wrestlemania comes out and begins to read a new e-mail from the general manager before stopping and smashing the computer. Rock then declares that the match will restart with no disqualifications or count outs. The match commences and in annoying fashion the Rock interferes with a Rock Bottom for Cena. The Miz pins him and wins. But the Rock isn’t finished, because he proceeds to attack the Miz also and gives him the most electrifying move in sports! (The People’s Elbow.) So a very lackluster ending to Wrestlemania which left a sour taste in my mouth. I was glad to have The Rock back but what a stupid way to end the biggest wrestling event of the year. Boo! Winner: The Miz

 

Check out what happened the following night at RAW!!!