Best: Shades of Rachel Summerlyn!
Sheamus gets a new submission hold, and I can’t believe it took them five years to give the shoot Irish guy a “cloverleaf”. Every major WWE superstar should have a signature submission to fall back on. It helps the drama of big matches, and doesn’t ask fans to buy a nearfall off a chinlock. Why do you think Shawn Michaels started doing that dumb Jamie Noble figure four out of nowhere?
Before you get mad at me for that Best title, okay, okay, shades of Dean Malenko. But if Sheamus starts doing Gory Bombs and giving piggyback rides to Jessica James I have the right to reinstate it.
Worst: Viewer’s Choice is Never the Viewer’s Choice
First of all, using “Power to the People” to promote your wrestling show is pretty terrible. I’m going to shoot Mike Quackenbush an e-mail and see if he’ll book a CHIKARA show called “Mother” and end it with a minute and a half of Eddie Kingston primal screaming.
Second of all, WWE is too many Taboo Tuesdays into its existence to convince me that I have any say in what happens on Raw. I guarantee you there will be two types of matches you can vote on. The first one is “WHO SHOULD JOHN CENA FACE IN THE MAIN EVENT” and they provide you two choices you’d never vote for (a. BIG ANDY b. MICHAEL TARVER, WHO WE JUST RELEASED) and the one they actually want (c. HANDICAPPED MATCH WITH MIZ AND SOMEBODY PROBABLY). The other is “HOW SHOULD WE TREAT OUR DIVAS” with two choices you’d never vote for (a. LIKE RESPECTED PROFESSIONAL WRESTLERS b. LIKE HUMANS) and the one they want (c. SHOW YOUR UTERUS EVENING GOWN PUDDING BRAWL).
If I do get to make the matches, I’d like the main event to be Goldust versus somebody, please.
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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.