/play Nickelback instrumental here
Did You Know? WWE has over 5,000,000 Facebook Fans, more than the NFL, ESPN, Major League Baseball, NASCAR, hamburgers, the sneezing panda, the What What In the Butt guy, Stove Top Stuffing, handlebar mustaches and the word “sports” COMBINED. [citation needed]
Did You Know? WWE’s next pay-per-view event, Over The Limit, takes place in two weeks!
Did You Know? “Over The Limit” is a WWE pay-per-view? I think it’s the one where Raw faces Smackdown in a car race and the winner gets the prestigious “Over The Limit” trophy. I also think it’s the PPV where The Big Show is always turning on people. They should at least call it “In Your House: Over The Limit.”
Worst: Are We Sure This Wasn’t Taped Four Months Ago
Maybe I shouldn’t have tried to soldier through Raw immediately after the gym and only a few hours of sleep the previous night, but what happened, did I fall asleep in the afternoon and travel time? This Raw looked like a “WWE BEST OF 2010-2011″ DVD, with Cena beating up Alex Riley to antagonize the Miz, Michael Cole making Jerry Lawler mad by insulting his dead mother, and a spotlight on the Mysterio/Del Rio, Swagger/Kingston and Punk/Big Show feuds. All we needed was for the That’s What I Am commercials to be The Chaperone (tagline: “I’m the chaperone!”) and we’d have been set.
Speaking of living in the past…
Worst: Either Have Michael Cole Skullf**k Jerry Lawler’s Mother on TV or Move On
I championed the Cole/Lawler angle for a few months, then spent about four years wishing it would stop. They had a match at Wrestlemania that was supposed to end in blood and piledrivers, but it couldn’t, and didn’t. So they had another match with less heat at the artist formerly known as Backlash, complete with straps for the lashing of backs, that should’ve ended with Cole being held down and beaten with a belt until he apologized. It didn’t end that way, so now we have to have a rushed little two week Lawler vs. Cole re-rematch for stipulations nobody outside of Lawler and Cole care about, and guess what? It isn’t going to end like it’s supposed to. It’s going to end with Cole winning Lawler’s Hall of Fame ring, getting inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame (by Lawler? Can Lawler do that?) and spending the NEXT pay-per-view cycle calling himself WWE Hall of Famer Sir Michael Cole.
Then, at Fatal 4-way we have to watch Michael Cole vs. Jerry Lawler vs. Jim Ross vs. Jack Swagger, with maybe Lawler’s crown and JR’s hat on the line, and Cole wins that with a roll-up after getting punched maybe once, and he can call himself WWE Hall of Famer Good Ol’ Sir Michael Cole. After that, Cole wins Money in the Bank (Mr. Money in the Bank, WWE Hall of Famer Good Ol’ Sir Michael Cole) and cashes in, somehow winning the WWE Championship with a roll-up on Jerry Lawler, and then we build to the big blow-off at Night of Champions where Lawler gets his “one last shot” at the WWE Championship, and nobody watches it.
And also Michael Cole wins that.
![[avatar]](http://p.uproxxcdn.com/photo/1245/thumb)
![[image]](http://cdn.wl.uproxx.com/wp-content/thumbnails/130/110/2013/06/thunderbolt-patterson-180x180.jpg)
![[image]](http://cdn.wl.uproxx.com/wp-content/thumbnails/130/110/2013/06/john-oliver-mick-foley-180x180.png)
![[image]](http://cdn.wl.uproxx.com/wp-content/thumbnails/130/110/2013/06/smt2du.jpg-180x170.gif)
![[image]](http://cdn.wl.uproxx.com/wp-content/thumbnails/130/110/2013/06/Collllllllllege-World-Series-180x180.jpg)
“Dolph Ziggler starts swimming around in it like he’s some sort of perverse Jersey Shore Scrooge McDuck. I made a joke about Ziggler looking like Evan Bourne with his new haircut, but no, last night he looked like f**king Tigger. All he needed to do was hit the Zig Zag on Santino and yell THAT’S WHAT ZIGGLERS DO BEST!”
…every single part of that is hilarious.
Another hilarious Best/Worst, especially early on with the trope examinations.
“Imma kick your cat” is a reference to Jay-Z, if you didn’t catch it. Justify My Thug, I think.
Starting a petition to make WWE Champion Archibald Peck a real thing.
The faces everybody else in the ring made while Truth was doing his “hospital food” speech were great. The Miz legitimately looked like he wanted to interrupt him and ask what the hell he was rambling on about.
“I Don’t Write Best and Worst of Smackdown”
You should. You’re good at this stuff.
btw… you think Truth’s stuff is scripted, or do they just say… “grab the mic and be crazy”…?
@Mitch – I would, but we don’t update on Saturdays. I could do “best and worst of Smackdown spoilers,” but that’d be pretty assumptive. As for the Truth stuff, I think it’s one part “grab the mic and be crazy” and one part “Ron Killings isn’t sure how to insult people without cursing.”
I really enjoyed this but maybe that’s because I have always hated Kane.
A No Limit Soldiers joke! It’s my little brother’s birthday all over again!
So, who was Ricardo Rodriguez in CHIKARA?
@Brian – “Chimaera.” Hard to believe it’s the same guy. [www.youtube.com]
I was thinking the same thing when I saw Ziggler last night. He looked painful, and by painful I mean his tanning bed burn looked horrendous, and because his “new and improved Dolph Ziggler” facial expression makes him look like he just ate a flatbed full of John Morrison’s hospital food.
Also worst: why in the fuck did we have to watch Riley walk a mile and a half to get from the dressing room to the ring? If that was Truth he’d have stopped for a smoke.
Not only is the Miz from Cleveland rather than L.A., but he’s actually from Parma, which is a nice enough little suburb but chiefly a place where old Ukrainian men sit around in Denny’s and plot in their own language to take over the world.
A grand dismantling of a fairly ridiculous wrestling program, as always. Better than last week’s abortion though, I’d have to say.
it’s crazy when they have a guy like rodriguez (mediocre high-flier) and all they have him do is announce. reminds me of shawn daivari doing nothing with mohammad hassan doing all the work, and i’m pretty sure armando alejandro estrada was the same deal?
I want to remind Jericho that his only amazing storyline post-return was written by him and Shawn Michaels and had almost nothing to do with the howler monkeys in WWE Creative.
Brandon, you’ve disappointed me for the first time. I was expecting to read a “When a angry black man is talking, you shut it up” joke.
@David – I didn’t want to make him any angrier, I own a cat and love it very much.
Uh yeah, if I wasn’t married, I’d totally be a Beth Phoenix groupie.
Awww… I like Kane!
You have me actually interested in wrestling again. I tried to watch but your review is still more entertaining. Bonus for Fire Pro references. Which was your favorite Fire Pro? I played “D” the most and pretty much everything pales in comparison to its glory.
Anyone else notice in the segment when A Ri was talking to the Miz in the locker room, that his shirt was dirty? Then he barges out to call out Cena and his shirt is clean?
Little things like these make me realize that I should start paying attention to the NBA playoffs instead.
I would give anything to have Shawn Daivari back on my television screaming in Arabic. It’s possibly my favorite gimmick of all time…
A+ coverage of the wrasslin’ show!
See, what I like about your style overall, Bran-man, is that you drop in a Wire reference when appropriate, whereas a drooling moron masquerading as a sportswriter might craft an entire sports op-ed piece around quotes from The Wire. But that would just be crazy!
I was a fan of A-Ri’s endless walk to the ring. I bet Kevin Dunn was screaming “Gahdammit thish ish takin too long!”
Lot of sites are giving this Raw bad reviews, but I had a blast watching it. Squash match after squash match, followed by a cool main event.
Being in the business, I’ve gotta tell you, love these recaps. (and the Homocide/Danielson title change, wasn’t a fan when we did that either)
@Kyle – Thank you, that means a hell of a lot to me. People in the business reading the recaps and not thinking I’m full of shit is the best. And yeah, I knew the Homicide thing was coming when it happened, but I was so sad. I’m such a Dragon fanboy, you can see me on like a quarter of the DVDs during his title reign, screaming and cheering like an idiot for him.
Okay, that backstage segment between Miz and Alex Riley was giving off serious Smithers/Mr. Burns vibes. Will The Miz ever realize that A-Ri loves him?