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Worst: The Worst And Worst Of Raw

I’ve got a soft spot for Eliminations Chamber. I love the idea of a staggered entry match where everyone’s already present, and since some combination of God not existing and Vince McMahon is keeping War Games from being a regular WWE thing, the Elimination Chamber is as close as we can get.

That being said, I enjoyed a lot of the Raw Elimination Chamber match, but it reminded me too much of an encapsulated episode of Raw. They ran through the entire thing in about twenty minutes — a pointless Kofi Kingston opener, five minutes of Dolph Ziggler selling so hard he almost splits in two, a crappy injury angle that takes too long and involves a phony X, an impromptu thing with The Miz and then CM Punk smiling and smirk-shrugging (smugging) at an injured guy in a way that makes me think, “hey, that’s not how one Bees A Star”. All it needed was a Just For Men baby-with-a-beard commercial and six video packages and it’d have been a Raw in total.

There were, of course, a few super bests, including:

Best: Dolph Ziggler, On All The Time

Believe it or not, this was my second favorite moment of the show. If you watched it, you know what placed in front of it.

Anyway, Dolph Ziggler has a few criticisms floating around the Internet, including:

1. “Bad offense”. His signature moves are a sleeper, a couple of jumping head-pulls, a dropkick and a Fame-Asser. Not exactly Kenta Kobashi in that department.
2. He is basically Billy Gunn. Same hair, same physique, same tights, same Fame-Asser.
3. He has a stupid name, which would only be made stupider if he had a nickname like “The One” Dolph Ziggler.
4. The Show-Off gimmick is too goofy, and you can’t take him seriously when he’s strutting around like an idiot.
5. He doesn’t know when to tone it down and sells everything like a zero-gravity Parkinson’s clown.

Those criticisms are rendered meaningless because of two things:

1. He does pull-ups in his Chamber Pod even when the camera isn’t on him
2. He does f**king crunches on the Elimination Chamber wall

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I don’t care if he wears a D-Generation X shirt and sews Billy Gunn to his goddamn leg, Dolph Ziggler is the best person on this show and you need to come to terms with that.

For further reading, please consult your local library and ask them if they have this .gif of Ziggler selling a Codebreaker on file, because holy sh*t.

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Best: To Reiterate, Kofi Kingston Is Extremely Good At Jumping

For the record, this match plays out GREAT in highlight form (particularly Miz’s Skull-crushing Finale nearfall that had me believing Miracles Could Happen for about two and a half seconds). That’s sort of a running theme for Raw matches over the last few years … they sacrifice the fundamental building blocks of what makes a wrestling match enjoyable in favor of “making movies” and having, say, Kane chokeslam a man through a stage and break his back and then not really being brave enough to deal with the consequences of the thing they’ve just booked.

But Kofi Kingston is very, very good at jumping. With Evan Bourne being ravaged by D.A.R.E., Rey Mysterio on the other side of his natural health and John Morrison committing future endeavors against Cliff Compton in Siberia or wherever, Kofi is WWE’s Jumping And Fun Stunts guy by default. He got Morrison’s “can you believe he’s not eliminated!” spot in the Rumble and gets his “can you believe what he just jumped from!” spot in the Chamber here. Assumedly he’ll get Morrison’s “appear meaninglessly somewhere in the beginning-middle” spot at Mania as well.

Say what you will about TV-PG ruining cage matches (and it has), but thank God Mattel hasn’t realized that being cut slightly isn’t much worse of a violent act than falling out of the sky and crushing someone with your body and banned everything.

Best: The Motherf**king Lion Tamer

There is a very specific kind of wrestling fan who marks out every single time Jericho elevates his Boston crab into the Lion Tamer Classic. I’m one of those people. People argue that the move was changed to protect the people taking it, but I have two problems with that:

1. Submission moves have to look like they hurt or they become John Cena’s STF, hurting every single finish they’re a part of by making us go “oh, great, here comes this bullsh*t again”.
2. It would’ve been super easy at any point between creation and now for Jericho to do an interview where he points out that for most of the musclebound WWE guys he can make them tap out with a Boston crab, but the skinnier high-flying guys are more limber, so he has to elevate it up and break their necks.

Worst, Leading to Best: Jericho’s Lame Elimination

chris-jericho-elimination-chamber-injuryWriting about it later, the Raw Elimination Chamber seems better than it was. I think a lot of the residual ill-will I’m feeling has to do with Jericho’s goofy-ass elimination from the chamber, getting kicked in the head by CM Punk and selling it by grabbing the cage door, swinging out, pirouetting down the ramp and flopping over into the guardrail. It was supposed to be “devastating”, but seemed like the kind of thing that would’ve put him over at least Ralph Macchio on ‘Dancing’.

It was lame, and the time wasted on making sure he was okay (and Punk’s reaction as he walked by him later) were just as lame, but at least it allows Jericho to lose without “losing” and gives them a reason other than “you say what I say!” to fight at Mania. But yeah, I would’ve preferred NOT pay 60 dollars for the set-up.