Pre-show notes:

- This is the worst episode of Raw in history.

Please enjoy The Best and Worst Of WWE Raw for July 9, 2012.

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Pre-show notes:

- Please excuse my lateness this week. I spent Monday night performing at The ND in Austin, breaking in our brand new Monday Night Watch Party, informally known as the Best and Worst of Raw Live. Highlights included me doing the ACH ring entrance and the wonderful comedians we had helping us out with improv commercials. Lowlights included watching this wrestling show. Our next show is on May 21, so come check it out. It’s free, and we’re gonna have a better idea of what works and an hour less to fill.

- If you haven’t listened to it yet, be sure to check out episode 2 of my pro wrestling podcast With Spandex. I talk to Deadspin and Grantland’s David “The Masked Man” Shoemaker about everything from WrestleMania to “Don’t Step To Ron”. It’s a good time. With Spandex will be taking a one week hiatus this week so I can cover the Moontower Comedy and Oddity festival for UPROXX, but it’ll be right back.

- Don’t be afraid to leave a comment on this report. We’ve build a great community of intelligent, funny wrestling fans and you should be a part of it, because seriously, you aren’t gonna find it anywhere else. Not even on that Fark page where they linked us but nobody clicked it and just talked about Raw on the Fark page.

- Follow us on Twitter @withleather, follow me personally @MrBrandonStroud and like us on Facebook.

- Biggest thanks again to Casey/THESTINGER for helping me out with gifs and pictures. Be sure to visit his gifs Tumblr for the stuff I didn’t use.

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Pre-show notes:

- Follow us on Twitter @withleather, follow me personally @MrBrandonStroud and like us on Facebook.

- Comments, likes, Googles and Webcrawler + shares appreciated. I wouldn’t be posting my thoughts on the show if I didn’t want to hear yours. Also I wouldn’t post it if I didn’t want you to tell me how great I am over and over.

- Be sure to come back to the site tonight for the Raw Open Discussion Thread, as well as tomorrow for the Best And Worst Of WWE Raw 2/20/12 report. The Rock will be there, probably!

Enjoy the report. The Best And Worst Of WWE Elimination Chamber ’12 is after the jump.

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Pre-show notes:

- Welcome to my second ever Best And Worst Of WWE [Insert Older Pay-per-view Show Title Here] report. The first effort, in case you missed it, was last month’s Best And Worst Of Royal Rumble 2000. That went over pretty well, even if it burned me out so much I couldn’t do a report for the 2012 edition, and Elimination Chamber is only a few years old so let’s consider “February PPV” time sensitive.

- Comments are appreciated. Clicking “like” is appreciated, tweets and retweets are appreciated, showing and sharing this to and with the people you know are appreciated. Older show reports are sketchy because nobody’s googling for them, so our traffic goes way down and they take like 80 hours to write, so why bother? But I WANT to write them, so if you support them and make them a success, I’ll keep cranking them out. At least make me popular enough to do a Best And Worst of that Glory Days Of Wrestling tin I bought at Half Price Books for like negative 2.99.

- Don’t forget to come back on Sunday and participate in our open discussion thread for Elimination Chamber 2012, happening live. I won’t be around for it, as I’ll be at ACW’s show in San Antonio, but I’ll be back in time to skim through and steal your jokes.

- Follow us on Twitter @withleather, follow me personally @MrBrandonStroud and like us on Facebook.

- A.J. was only three years old when this pay-per-view happened so she is not featured, but don’t worry, this is when the Divas were nearly naked 24/7, so if you’re That Guy you’ll enjoy it anyway.

But for now, please enjoy the Best And Worst Of WWE No Way Out 2007.

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Editor’s Note: As some of you may’ve noticed, we didn’t do the predictions contest namedropped in last week’s column. Instead, we’ve decided to set up a contest you can’t lose! All you have to do is drop a comment on the column below (a real one, preferably, not “I’m leaving a comment!”), tweet the URL of The Best And Worst Of WWE TLC ’11 out to your followers and make sure to include an @WithLeather at the end so we can see it. Do that, and you’ll be one of two people randomly selected by me and probably Bill to win 50 bucks. That’s it. You’ll get it on one of my Cleveland Indians checks and everything. So do that!

Okay, first things first:

- I’m not Brandon. Brandon isn’t here. He’s off in search of the world’s only vegan Chocolate Wonderfall into which he can dunk a mess of candied tofu, so until he’s done with his walkabout, I’m filling in for the Best and Worst of TLC. I’m Bill Hanstock from Progressive Boink, SB Nation, and/or Baseball Feelings. Tomorrow, you guys get the esteemed Justin, also from Progressive Boink, for Best and Worst of Raw. It’s a regular Progressive Boink week here! By the time Brandon gets back, we’ll be rating lesbians or talking about waterslides or whatever.

- It’s customary to plead for comments in these things, so if you’re reading this, please do take ten seconds of your time to leave a comment, even/especially if it’s just to let Brandon know how much better he is at these.

- You can always follow us on Twitter @withleather, follow Brandon personally @MrBrandonStroud and like us on Facebook.

- If you’re so inclined, you can also follow me on Twitter @sundownmotel or find me on SB Nation.

- All internal gifs are courtesy of Jerusalem at Punchsport Pagoda.

- Just as an advance warning, this recap contains zero (0) pictures of anyone named A.J. (Or does it?? SWERVE)

This show was way better than I expected it to be, so let’s get right down to business!

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Not that underpants Sheamus posing with a racist midget would do anything to keep you reading, but stay with me.

Tonight’s Best and Worst Of Smackdown Live-Blog starts up about 15 minutes before the show, so be there beginning at 7:45 EST for the festivities, which involve at least 15 minutes of me recapping the end of something on SyFy and pleading with you not to make Golden Corral Chocolate Wonderfall jokes. This is the last report I’ll be a part of until next week’s Smackdown live-blog, as blog regulars Bill Hanstock and Justin O’Connor will be filling in for me on Best And Worst Of WWE TLC 2011 and Best And Worst Of WWE Raw 12/19 respectively, so be around and hang out and chat with me and convince me I couldn’t easily be replaced by a wrestling joke-making robot. “Triple H is at it again. What a clown.”

You can set a reminder for the event, check out some info about commenting and get a free picture of A.J. after the jump.

UPDATE: Tonight’s special guest will be none-other than John Canton of The John Report. That’s huge. Don’t miss it.

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