This week’s edition of The Best and Worst of Raw is a little longer than normal, because sometimes the people in charge of pro wrestling decide they want to spend three hours doing what normally takes them two and what they could accomplish in one. WWE says the difference between a three-hour All-Star Raw and a normal episode is that superstars from the Raw and Smackdown brands come together for an exciting night of sports entertainment action! The actual difference is that during a three-hour Raw, you look at the clock and say, “Jesus, this is only halfway over?”
Next week is a three hour Raw as well, where fans get to vote on the matches and stipulations, because even WWE doesn’t want people paying money to see Capitol Punishment. Please enjoy 700 pages of The Best and Worst of Raw. At least it isn’t a slideshow!
Worst: Oh God, John Morrison is Back
I feel like I should explain myself before we begin. I want The Best and Worst of Raw to be an overwhelmingly positive column to contrast the “meh I’ll give this match a C-minus” Internet status quo. I WANT this to be good. I want it all to good. I want to sit down on Tuesday morning with a Five Star notebook and an oversized novelty pencil and have nothing bad to say. The best things you can do as a wrestling fan are to watch and be able to change your mind. So when John Morrison makes his triumphant return to Raw, I want his day-off comedy boot camp to have paid off, I want him to have actual wrestling gear, and I want him to know how to do a headlock without having to study Raja Lion tapes.
But yeah, when Stone Cold started getting all WHAT, DRANK BEERS, SUMBITCH on R-Truth about competing on Raw, I could smell John Morrison beside him. The R-Truth parts of my life started flashing before my eyes. I put a picture of Truth in my dead Mother’s locket, in case Starship Pain made me get all obviously symbolic.
Best: Wait, This is Actually the Best John Morrison Segment Ever
I proudly present to you the upside of not fast forwarding things you think you’ll hate. Morrison’s music played, and I sighed. He didn’t come out, and it played again. That’s wrestling TV code for “something unexpected is happening backstage”. Truth left the ring and started walking up the ramp, and I swear I pictured at least 45 variations of John Morrison jumping off of something onto him as he walked. When he went backstage, I thought Morrison was gonna swing by on the ceiling and Resident Evil 2 his ass. And then, nope, it was awesome!
When Truth looked at the camera and said “SHAZAM” I could feel okay again. Not as okay as if he’d gotten struck by lightning when he said it, but still, I was happy. Morrison was down, and Truth got to kneel over him and gloat for a little while before smashing him into the wall with a production cart. I looked down at my hands and realized I WAS WRITING THIS SEGMENT IN REAL TIME. Truth mugged for the camera like Daffy Duck and ran away, and we sent it back to the ring for a 15-minute Canadian Ninjas vs. Hiroyo Matsumoto/Misaki Ohata tag team match.
Well, at least most of that actually happened.
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Great as always.
On the Ryder thing, I don’t understand why WWE does what they do when shows are in people’s hometowns. They’ll do anything they can to make those people look horrible. In fact, I’m fairly sure Jim Ross was forced to eat animal excrement on more than one occasion in Oklahoma.
Maybe they don’t believe in Ryder that much. Fine, but the crowd would have gone berzerk if he did something cool last night. And if the last few weeks of inexplicable Alex Riley reactions have taught me anything, it’s that crowds will copy previous awesome crowds. That guy was a complete turd for the last year, and now crowds have chanted his name for four straight weeks. It could have happened with Ryder.
But hey, if there wasn’t time for that, I’m glad I at least got to see Santino again. Then again, I’m a sucker for guys with four moves, including a finisher that makes Starship Pain look like a Steiner Screwdriver into a pit of spikes.
Think you might have been distracted during Piper’s Pit. Hot Rod asked about saving Andre, Bundy & Mean Gene – No mention of Gorilla. Bummer to spend a section writing about something you misheard.
@Magic – Whoops, I guess so. But I can just sub Andre in, the joke is the same. Thanks for the heads up.
Yeah at this point it seems like we are just wondering exactly how the WWE will miss the boat with Ryder. It sucks but I said before that maybe staying under the radar is what’s allowing Ryder to shine.
Evan Bourne also is around to take crazy bumps. You sort of mentioned it with the Swagger Bomb comment but it is essential to the man.
Got a HUGE smile on my face at the first worst and best. Hilarious.
id vote for goldust main event too. but seriously we all should vote for zack ryder.
good thing all the heels were wearing black, i get confused who i should cheer for…
was layla the only diva not involved?
As long as the publicly run company is essentially a shareholder-financed money laundering scheme for a steroid-bound geriatric sociopath who enjoys crapping in peoples’ mouths (figuratively, maybe literally, let’s ask HHH), the WWE will crap in peoples’ mouths. CUZ IT CANNNNNNN. Also Vince McMahon hates himself and everyone else.
Outstanding job as always!
Oh man, and totally with you on the FPR team reference and ESPECIALLY “that” match you laugh at when you see it on a DVD back 5 years later.
Don’t get the guys hate for Morrison but his love for Cena. Cena is literally the worst multi-time champion in the WWF/E History.
Also, R-Truf is the best part of Raw now. and CM Punk is the fucking end of all things great.
Okay, triple post, but holy shit lol at the commercials thing because i see the general and dominoes and all that and uggghhhhh that pizza is NOT WORTH 16 DOLLARS YOU DORK
Not watching and only viewing things on the internet it looks like R-Truth and Zack Ryder are their biggest stars. Maybe it’s better if you don’t watch?
How quickly we forget Sweet Sapphire.
OK she got bought by Ted DiBiase but still.
Mean Gene’s jacket in the bucket made me laugh a bit too much.
Zack Ryder doing headstand pushups into a bowl of gel to spike his hair is the best stupid thing I’ve ever seen. Keep getting paid to do that, Zack Ryder!
I’ve wanted a frozen bottle of water to become a foreign object ever since that Buff Bagwell/Shane Helms incident ten years ago.
They should have just devoted an hour to Punk and Austin. Like a USA original. Make it a cop show where they are partners. Ones a young man transferred to the city that knows all the rules, and the other one is a old guy who’s best years are waaaay behind him but still doesn’t like the rules. But enjoys abusing women.
Another awesome article, and I’ll comment more when I have more time, but again, great stuff from start to finish, hilarious and insightful and usually completely accurate.
I think my favourite bit is either mocking the Power to the People concept or the fact that I haven’t seen Raw and just skimmed results elsewhere so this article alerted me to the fact that the show had a Punk/Austin confrontation. I would pay for a PPV to see that match alone.
..but yeah, these 3 hour shows never really accomplish a great deal do they?
More comments later.
I just feel so bad for Zack Ryder. He’s not demanding a World title shot or a Goldberg push, he just wants to be on Raw sometimes. He’d probably be happy being Santino’s wacky tag team partner and losing every week, but instead he’s restricted to Superstars (which Zack is smart enough to know is only one step away from future endeavors) with no escape in sight. If there were ever any plans for Zack Ryder he would have came out last night and got the big pop from the hometown crowd (with closeups on the signs) and then we could have seen where things went from there. That didn’t happen and now anyone who likes Zack needs to face reality and settle for Brett Matthews: Art of Wrestling podcast guest and Brett Matthews: Robbie E’s tag team partner.
Great job as always.
Watching that Ryder youtube video makes me hope that he will get a mega push in the not so distant future. That was amazing.
PS: Please show WWE raw youtube videos that are available to North American viewers. Thanks
The exra amazing thing about last night’s passion for Ryder is that they already got to see him beat Primo on Superstars. He had already gotten a decent match, huge face reaction, fans going nuts, the wokrs.
The fans just realize that Superstars is wrestling purgatory and that’s not enough.
@Vince–his name will be “The Scenario”.
Also, the understated “lol” after the Natalya best is the funniest thing I’ve seen all day. Awesome as always.
Wow. You are a terrible writer. Please kill yourself.
@Rob – John? Is that you?
I’m late on the comment but (1) R-Truth owns and I never ever thought I would say that and (2) Rob, cram it.
Oh look, an Internet person emerged from his swamp.
@Rob – The Joe Rogan post was two weeks ago. You’re late.