The Best and Worst of Raw 4/4/11 offers up the best (meaning the highest quality to be found in a given activity or category of things) and worst (most faulty, unsatisfactory, or objectionable) of the April 4 edition of WWE Raw. Brandon Stroud is a syndicated advice columnist whose weekly column, The Best and Worst of Raw 4/4/11, is featured in over 250 newspapers nationwide.
A few notes as to why this column is featured on a sports comedy blog:
- The illusion of professional wrestling as a TV program is that it is presented as a loosely organized sport, classifying itself as “sports entertainment.” That makes it about as legitimate as professional boxing, baseball before the 1960s and that one Super Bowl where Kurt Warner totally fumbled on purpose.
- That being said, it is fun to write and talk about. Pretending it is real even when you know it isn’t is pro wrestling’s only bearable form. It’s not ignorance, it’s suspension of disbelief. Some people can do it and move the hell on with their lives, some can’t.
- Wrestling posts get 30 comments and lots of traffic and nobody but me and Buster Olney care about baseball.
Now, on to the fake fighting. Please stay tuned for several high-definition images of men in their underwear.
[images -> MGFanJay @ DVDR]
Best: Sin F’n Cara
Wrestling needs to be fun again. Somewhere between Samoa Joe’s descent into fat nothingness and a bunch of bloodless cage matches, televised wrestling stopped being fun. It became an ordeal, something to sit through, full of hairless, muscly guys with bad tribal tattoos with names like Chasyn Dance. There is a huge list of things that can turn pro graps on a dime and make it the funnest thing ever, and one of them is CRAZY IMPROMPTU LUCHA MADNESS.
That’s what we got in the debut of Sin Cara last night, the unbeatable combination of Mexico’s biggest draw, a trampoline, and Enigma’s “Sadness, Part 1.” Cara made his first appearance to stop (that damn bully~) Sheamus from assaulting Daniel Bryan after a United States Championship defense. He ran to the ring, hopped in over the top rope, hit a few exciting moves and topped it off with what the Spanish announcers called a SUPER PLANCHAAAA. Kids ran to the merchandise table and bought everything with Sin Cara’s name on it in size extra small. Sheamus got an exciting new opponent, Daniel Bryan got the best EWR fantasy tag team partner ever and I got a debuting superstar who is guaranteed to never use the phrases “you people” or “each and every one of you.” Because he doesn’t speak English. Score.
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Don’t know how you can sit through a match with Sheamus, the glare off that pasty bastard is blinding.
Seriously though, he looks creepier than Goldust and Vicera combined. Never thought I’d say this about a pro wrestler, but that guy needs to hit the spray on tan harder.
I’m surprised they were able to find enough Valtrex to scrub the ring with in so short a time.
The best was when Miz called the afroed dude “Buckwheat”
ALSO, one thing to remember is that the WWE couldn’t be trusted to give us a money payoff for the EASIEST angle ever to give us a money payoff (Cole/Lawler). How am I going to trust them to give me a payoff for a 12 month build?
HEY GUYS ITS THE ROCK AND HES MAD
amazing
Oh yeah, did anyone else imagine Vince screaming in Booker’s headset to shut up when he remarked that John Morrison probably didn’t get all of Starship Pain?
@TH ha, yeah, at this point you know the production team sees Morrison setting up for Starship Pain and is all “sighhhhh shoot it from over Vickie’s shoulder.”
*has spikey hair*
*jobs to Great Khali*
Are you gonna tell me your favorite match DOESN’T feature Judah Friedlander as the world’s worst Joel Gertner?
Cena/Rock as a storyline is just the worst. The WM27 main event was DESTROYED to make way for the next year’s. No one is paying $60 to see an advertisement for 2012′s show.
@TH Yup. “Keep those details out of it, damnit!”
I’ve never seen the greatest match of all time before. Thank you for introducing me to it, I can die a happy man now.
The intro for Judah Friedlander was pretty damn funny though.
Now I’m a pretty patient guy,but who the hell is gonna care about the Cena/Rock beef a year from now? Cena should have told him “now or never”,and then punched him in the jaw. Also,Sin Cara’s debut was pretty sweet. It would be refreshing to see some more matches and downplaying all the in-ring trashtalk/backstage beef sessions. That shits gotten real old.
Orton/Mysterio/Punk/Rhodes was more than just mildly disappointing for me. I really Really REALLY wanted Cody to take a punt, just to solidify his imagined disfigurement. Also, not really mentioned, but Tough Enough is a lot better than I expected. Austin FTW.
It looked to me like there was almost a Shockmaster kick-off to Sin Cara – did he just barely clear the top rope, or actually skim it and not make a “smooth” dive?
The intro to this article is kind of the best thing ever.
Am I the only one who got fucking crazy chills when Miz+Cena ALMOST won the tag team belts right before facing off at wrestlemania? i thought that would have been awesome. I still want to see some superstaresque teams show up… Rock+Cena, Edge+Christian, Miz+Rhodes?/Punk?/Orton?
@BRandon: I think you cursed Stone Cold the other day. He dropped at least two beers. It looked like he couldn’t believe it was happening either, at least going by the look on his face toward the end of the segment.
Does nobody in WWE know any Spanish besides those announcers? Cole and Matthews constantly saying Sin Care-uh was annoying as hell. If you’re going to spend weeks marketing this new international superstar, don’t you think you should learn to pronounce his name correctly? Also, just go ahead and set Cole on fire. He doesn’t even do heel commentary well, since he doesn’t do it across the board. He just stays on Miz’s, Punk’s, and his own nuts the whole time. Lawler was the master, Cole doesn’t have a clue how to do this right.