Best: Mark Henry Charges For Air

“If I charge for air, YOU KEEP YOUR BILL PAID!”

With R-Truth having a string of bad matches and letting his hilarious Little Jimmy persona sorta seep too deeply into mental disease, I might be brave enough to name Mark Henry as the best thing going. What they’re doing with him is perfect, and in just the right size. The cage match stipulation (particularly with the “pinfall, submission, or escaping the cage IN ANY WAY” disclaimer during the introductions) was only there for a stunt, and sure, when Mark Henry came down and approached the cage door I had fever flashbacks of him helplessly shaking the sh** out of that door on Smackdown years ago. But he ripped it off without much effort, it looked good, he dragged the cage door into the ring and bonked the living dog piss out of Big Show with it.

The cage wall collapsed, and Henry nimbly jumped out of the ring and shouted awesome things at people until his segment was over. The one up there was the best, but I also appreciated his “I suck? You over there I’m over here, I’M OVER HERE YOU OVER THERE” to a fan. That’s true, I am over here, and Mark Henry is over there. Mark Henry is TERRIFYING FOR REAL, and if they put any kind of real effort behind maintaining that they can make tons and tons of money off of him for years to come. Or at least make up that whole ten million dollar contract thing. Let him rip off Randy Orton’s head like a second run Big Lots action figure and World’s Strongestly Slam motherf**kers into oblivion for a few years. Then you can do the romance angle with Kharma and write him out. But give him this.

Worst: Wait, What Happened With Mark Henry

Unfortunately for Miz-ark, something much more globally important happened on Raw, and his beefy awesomeness is going to get overshadowed. Such is the state of Monday Night Raw. You either have to do it on Smackdown where nobody’s watching, or do it on the Raw undercard where people are waiting to watch something else. Maybe Mark Henry can get into a worked shoot with D’Lo Brown about which members of the Nation of Domination were the militant separatists, and which ones secretly loved white people and wanted to star in Witch Mountain remakes.

Best: Tornado Rules

I’ve got an idea for maintaining Alex Riley’s momentum: always let him be in the ring with Rey Mysterio. They clicked magnificently as the world’s slowest Speed Muscle, with Riley as the homeless man’s Naruki Doi and Mysterio as a Masato Yoshino who can’t stop setting people up for the Sling Blade. How are these Dragon Gate references working for you? Good?

Basically what I’m trying to say is that I love tag team wrestling and as a child of the National Wrestling Alliance of the 1980s there’s nothing I love more than a hot tag, but sometimes it’s better to just let everybody be in there at once and do moves to each other, and “tornado tag rules” was the only wholly appropriate stipulation on the night. Although hey, what would’ve happened if Kelly Kelly and Nikki Bell had landed on “tornado rules”?

Worst: Cena and Tables Are This Generation’s Laurel and Costello

Poor John Cena. I think part of what’s making Punk’s rise toward dying in a blaze of glory so compelling is how bad Cena’s been about everything since he fell and clipped his head on a coffee table shortly before Wrestlemania. Cena is great in a street fight, especially when he can bleed buckets and choke out Samoan savages with pieces of the ring. If he’s falling into windshields or spotlights or using a crane to murder The Great Khali, he’s good. But tables… he sucks with tables. Remember when he was wrestling Sheamus and just sort of jumped backwards through a table for no reason to lose the match? He did that here, just standing in front of anything he can find in case somebody wants to put him through it. He’s always getting dumped on announce tables, too. He should stay away from tables completely. He should buy TV trays. Or he should just hold his dinner in his lap and eat it on the couch.

I think I speak for everyone when I say “CM Punk should win the WWE Championship, take it to Ring of Honor or Jersey All Pro or wherever and defend it against Ruckus or an interpersonally road-raging Davey Richards or whoever and let Cena wrestle The Rock at the bottom of the f**king ocean”.

And, finally,