Worst: Whoever Had The Temerity To Put Heath Slater In A Match Against Brodus Clay Is An Ignoramus

Heath Slater is not Curt Hawkins, no matter how much they look alike, and should not be used as such.

I hate giving Worsts to Heath Slater matches. In theory this could’ve been good, but Brodus has kinda plateaued in the ring, and even the One Man Band (Baybay) can’t sell spectacularly when his opponent’s moveset is “stand still” and “move forward slightly”. The match had its high points (Heath’s attempt at explaining how he’s the One Man Band at the beginning of the match, humping up and down like he was trying to churn butter from Clay’s neck during a front facelock and crawling across the ring on his knees with his hand over his face to sell a forearm), but no, it was literally nothing.

Also, let me try this out:

English: “I do not want to see children dance with Brodus Clay.”
Spanish: “No quiero ver a los niños bailar con Brodus Clay.”
French: “Je ne veux pas voir les enfants danse avec Brodus Clay.”
Swedish: “Jag vill inte se barn dance with Brodus Clay.”
German: “Ich will nicht zu sehen, Kinder Tanz mit das Fettschweinmann.”

Now if I could figure out how to translate it to Tout. The only sentence I know in Tout is “ah lack wartchin’ Raw” followed by six consecutive crotch-chops.

Worst: MizTV

I don’t say this a lot, but the guy who chanted “boring” during Miz TV was on the right track.

I can’t think of a more straight-up boring four minutes in recent memory. Triple H doing that thing where he closes his eyes and lowers his head between sentences to remember his lines (“this business”) and/or absorb real or imagined crowd response is more entertaining than Miz TV. It wasn’t necessarily BAD, but man, my brain at that moment in time was not prepared to handle it. Everything before the ending was as bad as the ending was good. Maybe I couldn’t recover from him failing to mention Carlito’s Cabana, I dunno.

Hopefully this will be the last-ever edition of Miz TV, and next week will start with Miz walking out in a suit with a microphone and Ryback rushing out to immediately crush his body with the big light-up M. Too bad the live mic that ended up in the crowd fell into the hands of a troglodyte and not somebody who could’ve spat out PUSH DAMIEN SANDOW or something before it was whisked away. GAULDBARG, GAULDBARG, GAULDBARG~! At least shout your blogspot URL, dude.

Ryback Couch WWE

Best: F**K YO COUCH

I’m not kidding, I would pay good money for a ‘Storage Wars’-type show where Vince McMahon bids astronomical amounts for storage units at auction, then just opens it up and tells Ryback to throw everything he can find inside. Just a show about him throwing couches and partially-built jet-skis and old arcade cabinets and shit.

We wanted Ryback to move on to something other than squashing the Stans Stansky of the world, and here it is. Whether it’ll lead to an ersatz Goldberg vs. Raven United States Championship Match or not, it’s enough to make me tune in next week and see where it goes. Miz’s Backstage Fallout interview should be two sentences: “I am not prepared for this” and “has anybody seen Alex Riley?”, only to find that RYBACK has seen Alex Riley and that ALEX RILEY HAS BEEN EATEN.

Best: You Know, Honestly, If The Sock Gives His Arm Magical Striking Power He Shouldn’t Be Able To Use It In Matches, It’s No Better Than A Loaded Tennis Racket Or Whatever

I really dug this match, even though the WWE Fan Nation video starts with that weird botch/Lex Luger forearm attack Ziggler did and just rolled with. For some reason (as you might’ve picked up) I’m fascinated by Santino Marella and extremely into any match featuring him getting beaten up. It just feels right and makes sense to me. Ziggler screwing around with him before Zig-Zagging him twice was glorious, as was the continuation of Santino’s story about being too distracted by prop-hand shenanigans to win a wrestling match. You established that the Cobra was just a puppet on your arm, bro, there was no puppet for like the first two years you did it, just do the Cobra and win without the puppet.

The “Let’s Go Ziggler” chants were encouraging, although they’re starting to feel more like what a WWE audience thinks they’re supposed to say when Ziggler’s wrestling, rather than an actual cheer for Ziggler. Regardless, everyone looked effective here — Ziggler got to actually show off in a match without looking like it was gonna make him lose, Vickie got to be a useful hand at ringside by keeping the snake puppet away from Santino, and Santino got to make 12,000 people go AHHH HE’S GONNA DO THE HAND JIVE WE PAID TO SEE before getting super disappointed. Win, win, win.

I feel like Santino needs to get back into a tag team and get shuffled back into the growing tag division. Put him with Brodus again, that was fun for a minute. Tag him up with Big Zeke and call them “E-snake-ial”. Put him with Sgt. Slaughter and have them feud within the team because of how much Sarge hates Cobra. Who cares? Everything’s a good idea.

Worst: Bring Me Jared From Subway

Usually when Subway shows up on Raw, it’s great. Remember Santino stealing JELLY STUPID LOLLER’s “delicious Subway sub”? Remember CM Punk telling Luke Gallows and Serena to bring him “Jared From Subway”?

Those were both good, but this one (save for the Ryback ending… because Ryback’s job is to show up at the end of terrible skits and threaten people until it gets good) was terrible. It presented too many questions. Was Truth manipulating the politeness of a stranger by making Jared assume he was out of his mind just to get two subs instead of one? Why were those subs hanging out of their wrappings? I worked at a Subway, we don’t just wrap the ass end of it and hand it to you. If Subway doesn’t think an off-white paper tube looks appetizing, why wrap it like that in the first place? How is Jared from Subway still a fitness and health spokesman when his boobs are bigger than AJ’s? How did Kofi not know Truth was talking about Subway’s birthday when he walked into the Subway sandwiches room and it was full of balloons? WHO THINKS WE’RE STUPID ENOUGH TO BELIEVE THAT DAMIEN SANDOW WOULD EVER EAT AT A SUBWAY. It should’ve just been Jared going “hey Truth and Kofi, it’s Subway’s birthday! Here, eat this loaf of garbage”.

I’m also really upset that Daniel Bryan dropped his veganism a week before the Subway promo, so he couldn’t storm in and start yelling about how Subway advertises “fresh food” but their only options are salted meat-approximations and the “veggie delight”, which is f**king high school cafeteria salad good at best. These guys are so ignorant to how vegetables work they treat an avocado like f**king Ripley had just stumbled out of the jungle with it in a butterfly net and dropped it off at Subway HQ. I’m also sad that Kane didn’t show up and set Jared on fire.

Fun fact: I am 99% sure that Destiny once dated Jared from Subway. He looked exactly like that and ate Subway every day.