The Best And Worst Of WWE Raw 9/13

“Do you know what John Cena’s real name is? It’s John Cena.”

I don’t know why that made me laugh so much, but thanks.

Woah.. nice New Jack/Beyond the Mat reference.

Miz and R-Truth are the best thing on RAW.

Eh, the final Triple H-CM Punk segment was fine. No, it wasn’t “hey Colt Cabana” or “We want wrestling” but it was okay for it was. And I may be the only one but I thought the end of the statement was fantastic. The mic getting cut off was a real “oh shit” moment and though it will be probably just end up being Stephanie McMahon, it was still an engaging segment, which is all I ask for sometimes.

Also, in my fantasy internet wrestling mind, this whole Lawler angle leads to Colt Cabana debuting in the WWE, which I know is the worst, Bleacher Report-iest thing to say. But it makes too much sense. When you think about, Zack Ryder and Colt Cabana are like the same person. Two guys with a huge amount of charisma and in ring talent but are unappreciated (Cabana to a lesser extent here, I guess) despite the fans loving them. Of course, that’s assuming Colt Cabana wants to sign with the WWE but it’s all hypothetical for now.

why did Cena have to say “thousandaire”? Why?

also, Zack Ryder’s 1-99 record is going to lead to me calling him Gabby Jay forever now

Beth’s Shatterstar helmet, lol. Wow. That’s some Dennis Miller type referencing shit right there. I also appreciated the NewJack/Beyond the Mat one too.

At this point with Punk and HHH I really do just want to see them beat the hell out of each other Sunday night, regardless of the outcome.

Also, how the fuck does this end in a satisfying way? Something happens at Night of Champions that makes Punk say “oh triple h you were right my bad i’m sorry” or, worse, something happens that makes Punk say “triple h you are the lesser of two evils let’s be friends and fight them now.” Either way Punk looks like a weak dumbass (nobody wants CM Punk to be friends with Triple H, we don’t want Punk to be friends with anyone) and either way Punk loses the match. How does this help anybody?

Every week I try to remember the way I felt about WWE and CM Punk at Money in the Bank and the more time passes I wonder if it was even real. I mean, Colt Cabana went from sitting in the front row seemingly on the verge of signing to spending all his time in England and Japan. This is not my beautiful house, this is not my beautiful wife.

Wull, I like the TKO….but in my own defense, I stopped watching wrestling from 1994 to 2006, so perhaps 1998′s asshole didn’t taste so putrid to me.

But that doesn’t mean I give a shit about Alex Riley.

wonderful as always.

The Punk-H angle is falling apart because, my god, it’s two thousand got-danged eleven, and anyone who cares to do so can visit any of the 800 bajillion wikipedia articles or imdb pages or reviews of “the chaperone” to find out what your real name is, and thus for both the people who do and the people who don’t care about that stuff it’s a spectacular waste of time. It’s not cute, anymore than trying to elbow us in the ribs each week with a “do you know who this dude’s wife is? huh huh” reference when they’re coming upon like 8 years of marriage? that’s the linen anniversary, btw. i looked that up, on wikipedia.

Dunno if you watched any football over the weekend Brandon, but relative to the “tributes” to the victims of 9/11 foisted on us not just once but during the kick off to EVERY game, I found WWE’s approach and Vince’s message (which really boiled down to “Let’s not forget what happened, but also let’s get on with our lives and do the things we love to do to show the bad guys we’re not scared”)and to a lesser extent Cena’s speech more palatable than the NFL’s “REMEMBER HOW AWFUL THAT WAS? LET’S ALL FEEL AWFUL AGAIN!” Over and over and over.

Also Sheamus’ performance as a wrestler is perfectly correlated with the size and strength of his opponents. I just don’t enjoy watching him mulch people he should mulch, and watching those people wilt like delicate flowers plopped into the sun’s corona. They need to put him against more Henry-esque guys where both men can legitimately seem to try and demolish each other instead of cannon fodder. It’s like playing Doom or Quake (dating myself here) with God mode on. Yeah it’s fun once, but eventually you get tired of just running up to every monster and vaporizing him with the BFG.

I’m with uconngary7. Where’s the ADR I like from the past few weeks (Canadien immigrant comment aside- that was a best)? He shouldn’t acknowledge that the crowd is laughing at him, he’s supposed to think we all love him (the “Guys!” bit from the episode of Raw where he beat up Rey). Also, he shouldn’t hang Ricardo out to dry like that. Brandon, just because he’s done it before doesn’t make it good. ADR is a better heel than this. However, if he makes it up to Ricardo next week by hooking him up with less attractive Bella we’re cool.

I thought the Punk/HHH bit was OK. At least Punk wasn’t Peter Griffin gagging for 15 minutes.

What I learned this week was all of Brandon’s e-fed guys looked like Test.

I can’t get home to read these things fast enough. Nice work.

The fact that I’m getting tired of these terrific analogies (ie – Truman Show) is a testament to how repetitive this Goddamn product has become. They really dropped the ball on the Punk angle, and Del Rio (who is awesome) has become virtually an afterthought.

Still better than Smackdown though.

I can imagine Punk actually signing off on this crap. I want to believe he has these cutting edge ideas for a script and then the WWE writer/HHH get ahold of it and just butcher it to the point that we’re seeing every Monday. I thought my DVR was skipping like a scratched record with Mr. Ayches said “you have to get over with these people” literally 3 times WHILE they were chanting “CM Punk”

They’re still clueless.

They don’t (and shouldn’t) get credit too often, but Meltzer and Alvarez’s latest podcast has a great point about the “bodybuilders” thing. Guys like Mysterio and Foley are aberrations: the exceptions that prove the rule. HHH couldn’t get his shit together for five years and would’ve been let go had he not been big enough. Eventually HHH got really good in 2000/2001 (and immediately stopped in 2002), so he worked hard and “made it” but also had Vince McMahon in his corner. That’s like the pro wrestling version of white privilege. My family works hard and is successful, but might not be as successful with darker skin pigmentation. HHH worked hard and became successful, but would be fighting Abdullah in the armory had he not juiced up. The bodybuilder fetish is a real thing, and why Mason Ryan and Titus O’Neil are on last week’s Superstars instead of UltraMantis Black and Frightmare.

So while Punk tries to push buttons and effect change, Trips tows the company line and makes sure Punk doesn’t get another word in. Looking at the program as purely fictional wrestling characters, it’s interesting, but it gets scary when you know these are actual men stating their actual beliefs. Punk, no matter how hard he tries, can’t effect change unless Vince or Trips has a legitimate change of heart. Colt Cabana still isn’t hired, bodybuilding FCW clones still aren’t fired, most belts are still worthless, Kelly Kelly and John Cena still refuse to challenge the audience. It’s going to be that way forever, or at least till ratings dip even more and the WWE pulls out all the stops, then fires all the great guys after they’re in a stride again.

If we’re going to get an elaborate storyline about improving the company, the company had better be improved. Dropping “Paul Levesque” or calling Stephanie McMahon a whore could be fine fluff surrounding the main plot, but now it’s the whole plot and it feels tacky and worthless. I’d much rather be watching that 45-minute draw between CM Punk and Fire Ant.

Clearly Alberto got wind of Ricardo’s FCW interview and this was his punishment.

God bless AJ for continuing to be on my television/this website intermittently in some kind of role.

Final segment was stupid in numerous ways – almost TNA-stupid, with all the insider worked shoot crap that goes way over 70% of the audience’s heads, and that all online sheet writers would be crapping on for doing just that had it happened in the Impact Zone.

However, I thought the final minute or so was great, and pretty much what they should’ve been talking about 3 weeks ago, as opposed to Kevin Nash, texting, and people’s knees. They condensed about a month of total bullshit into ‘I dislike you and don’t trust you, let’s punch and kick each other to death’. Sadly, they’ve taken the sting out of the whole thing by creating an unnecessary circus of nonense around Punk, turning him from a rebel into a crybaby who let an old man with a half-shaved upper lip get under his skin.

Great article as always. And you’re right, What the f**k did happen to the Indians??

i thought the final segment between CM and HHH was well acted, but it really made me think of the episode of South Park that they did about wrestling, about how its really just a opera at this point.

great as always Brandon.

This is a terrible thing to say, but you all know someone who isn’t funny and doesn’t have the best of social graces, but that one time told the most absolutely hiliarious joke you and your friends had heard in a long time. A combination of working hard and just the right moment made the socially-stunted guy the life of the party.

Then the next week he tries out that same joke and the circumstances aren’t aligned anymore and it’s not funny. But he tells it again and now it’s tedious. He keeps telling it because he thinks the words are what made everybody like him but it was the social surroundings and timing that got him over. Now he just tells the same damn joke and you’re so annoyed.

CM Punk, please do something new.

I don’t really care about anything else that happened in that last segment, because Punk smacked Triple H with the mic and we got the noise it makes when that happens, which will never not be one of my favorite things about wrestling ever.

I would pay Kelly Kelly to rub her ass in my face. I’d pay a lot.

I’m really sick of the CM Punk/HHH plot. If it had been about 3 weeks shorter, it might have been ok, but it doesn’t make much sense now. I get this strange feeling like CM Punk is going to beat HHH, HHH is going to get “fired”, CM Punk is going to get “injured” and they’re going to make him the COO or something. A “You wanted to run the company? You run the company.” sort of thing.

The worst thing that could happen would be if they made Punk form a mega stable, and then have HHH form a mega-stable and then it would become NWO/WCW again and would make me stop watching wrestling again.

Another awesome, well thought out article. These are becoming alot more entertaining than the actual show as of late. Based on the last several weeks,if I skipped Raw and just read this article, I wouldnt feel like I missed out.

Also, Miz and Truth are like the Pryor/Wilder of the WWE. Pure unfiltered awesome.

Also, I’m also still waiting for those ice cream bars. Those were the fuckin bomb! Keep up the great work!

I had to go to Wikipedia mid-show last night to confirm that Mark Henry was indeed ECW Champion, and more to the point that he had never won the world title on Smackdown. While there, I learned that he was trained by Bret and Stu Hart…is there video of this? If not, why the hell not? I want to see 120-year-old Stu Hart stretching Mark Henry.

Yeah this was an off week which made it seem like more of a chore for you. Still good but less enthusiastic than normal.

Space Jam is still the best nickname. AJ is still cute.

“That’s what the American League tends to do to the National League (pitchers batting is the “Doink” of baseball, a thing that seems stupid and IS stupid, but started off as a great idea). ”

THIS. SO this. As I tell my husband all the time, “No one pays good money for a ticket so they can watch a pitcher flail at a ball.”

Love the rest of the baseball analogy as well; you nailed it as always, my friend. :)

I know it’s old news, but instead of “Air Boom,” how about “AirAirAir BoomBoomBoom” or “Bouncy Smiley?” god, I’m hatin’ just the sight of these guys.
The current floundering does make one curious about the writing process. One thing that would help… less mic time for EVERYBODY. Just started watching wrestling again (it’s kind of a “relapse” and, yes, there’s self-loathing), and that hideous Kane/Undertaker exchange/staredown of a couple years(?) ago seemed to make time stand still. Unbearable. TNA… same thing. For awhile TNA and one of the WWE shows had the same start time. In switching back and forth, WWE would be moving on to their 2nd match while the TNA show was still having what resembled a town meeting in the ring. Entertainment… I think not!

Would also like to note as a Best, or at least very entertaining: Ricardo’s nonverbal attempts to avoid having to fight, then later his resignation and attempts at preparation for what is certain to be an asskicking. That was funny, and all credit to Rodriguez for making it funny. I just hope they let him continue doing his thing, and don’t try to pair him with Santino cuz two funny foreigners is twice as funny, hyuk hyuk!

1. If the Indians are WCW during that same period, who’s Thome’s analogue? Eddie is Omar Vizquel, Benoit is Matt Williams… I’d say Jim Duggan if Hacksaw hadn’t been chiefly worthless from 1988 onward.

2. I want to see Laurinaitis and Trips and Teddy and the Raw GM laptop arguing in a stalemate when who should kick down the door and assert his authority but THE AMERICAN GLADIATOR MIKE ADAMLE.

3. The TKO is only awesome on video games when the fireman’s carry is dropped into a sit-out stunner and it looks like the victim’s neck is broken. A brief survey of YouTube reminds me that Marc Mero sucked even more than I remember, even if he did have a reasonably nice shooting star press.

4. I like Kofi well enough, but you’re completely right about nearly all of his matches being interchangeable. He’s been wrestling in the WWE for nearly four years, and the only specific things I can recall from him are 1) using the broken ladder as stilts during MITB, 2) boom-dropping Orton through a table off a ledge that one time he got really angry, and 3) Trouble in Paradising himself right into a Wasteland to lose the IC Title.

5. I’m not sure where this Lawler/Not Really Nexus angle is headed either. Like you say later in the article, it’s pretty obvious that wrestling isn’t a “real” sport and it’s pointless to complain about it, but it would be nice if they at least tried to act like it is sometimes. That means not constantly saying “business” and “industry” like HHH and Punk did at show’s end, and it also means Jerry Lawler not evaluating opposing wrestlers/tag partners based on “charisma”. “Man, that Heath Miller is technically a pretty good tight end, but he totally lacks charisma, Bob. I don’t know why the Steelers wasted a draft pick on him!”

6. I wonder if Otunga ever sits around thinking, “Aw man, my neck hurts, I hope it’s not a permanent injury. I’ll have to retire from the ring… and fall back on my J.D. from the best law school in the nation and millionaire Oscar-winning wife. Bad-ass.”

7. Hahaha oh man, Jackie Gayda. My favorite part is when she sells getting shoved off the second rope onto her feet by wobbling and doing The Swim in place like Chubby Checker is right outside the ring.

8. I almost put Bobby Lashley on that list, but he held the ECW Title back when they were still pretending that belt was important and Lashley was omnipresent in the upper midcard. By the time Chavito was losing to Kane in four seconds and Ever-Grinnin’ Mark Henry w/ Crazy Ramblin’ Tony Atlas gave up the belt to f*cking Matt Hardy, it was only a matter of time before Big Zeke got his grubby Guyanese mitts on it.

9. Excellent as always, despite the uninspired source material. More front-page AJ pictures plz, because they appear as the thumbnail picture for the article at the bottom of every page and that makes me happy.

The AJ pic ruled, much like last week’s. More of her when you get back, alright?

CM Punk’s character has completely lost his edge. He’s become a toothless, boring version of the guy who turned the wrestling world on its ear prior to MITB. Hopefully the storyline will take an interesting turn at NOC and be reinvigorated but I just don’t see it happening. Predicting a HHH victory via swerve assistance from Nash. Cody Rhodes beating Orton was pretty sweet and I like R-Miz a lot. Beyond that, a bad RAW.

Come on Stroud, AJ Lee isn’t even on Raw. Stop with the pandering (not really…I’d play fantasy football and Words With Friends and watch chick flick and bad action movies with her all day, every day).

Great job noticing the command of power being used as a lazy tool to just shoehorn whatever match or event seems appropriate. I can accept that from little ol’ Impact, but I totally expected a little tighter writing from this crew, who all but confirmed that they dropped the ball on the Anonymous GM and sent that ship sailing.

I hope in a couple of months they reveal the GM to be a superfriends coalition of Vinny Mac/Lauranitis/Teddy Long/Mick Foley/Kevin Nash/Vickie and maybe some Todd Grisham for a cross over effect.

Additional best for those AJ calves….wait…what? No one else here is a calves man?

I just came here to say that your column from the past 3 weeks has me watching wrestling again. Thanks alot!

great column, once again

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