Pre-show notes:

- Hey, you, person reading this column. Register and leave us a comment. When you’ve done that (or possibly before), click that “like” button over the banner image and/or share this with everyone you have ever met, including your half-siblings and that one weird guy at work who found out you like wrestling and won’t stop trying to ask you about it. He’d love this column.

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

- SITE NEWS #1: We’re going to be running a TLC predictions contest on Friday where you can drop a comment and win $250 bucks. It didn’t work out so well for us with Vengeance (thanks a lot, Mark Henry breaking the ring) but I’ve got to give that purse to somebody. Be sure to check back throughout the week for that.

- SITE NEWS #2: Next weekend is my girlfriend Destiny’s birthday, so I’m not going to be around for TLC or Raw reports. Thankfully I’ve got a lot of funny ass friends, so SB Nation and Baseball Feelings writer Bill Hanstock will be filling in with a Best and Worst of WWE TLC 2011 report and Progressive Boink and The Best and Worst of Smackdown Live-Blog’s own Justin O’Connor will be filling in on Best and Worst of Raw. They’re awesome, so read those and support them.

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

- For further Raw reading, please consult UGO’s The Good The Bad And The Ugly and John Canton’s The WWE Raw Deal. They have slightly more positive outlooks on the show than me, but my report has pictures of A.J. (read mine first)

This show was three hours and killed me four minutes in, so I apologize in advance. Click through to enjoy The Best And Worst Of The Slammy Awards.

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Pre-show notes:

- If you love The Rock and think he’s the best wrestler of all time, be sure to leave us a comment. That should cover my commenting hype-beg for the week and entitle every living human who isn’t me or Billy Jack Haynes to post something.

- An important thing to remember while reading this report is that I had a weekend literally full of awesome wrestling. I spent Friday night and Saturday and Sunday mornings at Wizard World Austin loitering around Darin Childs’ table in the 1600 aisle, commissioning professional art from my favorite wrestler in the world. Saturday night I went to Anarchy Championship Wrestling’s Lone Star Classic, which featured Portia Perez winning their heavyweight title only to lose it an hour later. ACH ended up with it, which was the second happiest thing that could happen. Also, the Nasty Boys were there. Sunday was CHIKARA’s High Noon iPPV. I was too worn out by then to cover it effectively, but it was one of the best shows of the year and Peck/Cabana II was simultaneously the best and worst match in history. So then Monday night comes along, and it’s three hours of Raw getting Rocked. My brain may not be processing this correctly.

- Oh, and before I forget, after the jump you can see four of my five (or six) favorite WWE Superstars appearing in one segment together on Friday’s Smackdown. Why am I not Besting and Worsting this show instead?

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Pre-report notes, which really need a catchy name. Protes?

- In case you missed last week’s announcement, the UPROXX™ network has a brand new social system for comments, so register and leave a comment let us know what you thought of the show and report.

- Speaking of leaving comments, on Friday we’re having a WWE Vengeance predictions party where you’ve got a chance to win a $250 prize by doing so, so register now, get in the swing of how commenting works and check back nonstop for the rest of your life.

- Picture of The Chickbusters in Mexico loosely related. Neither of them show up on Raw (or Smackdown), but at least Kaitlyn makes an appearance to wrestle on NXT. She faces Maxine, and hopefully makes fun of Maxine’s fish lips despite also having big lips. Yes, if you click that picture, it gets bigger.

- Raw is coming to Austin, Texas, next week for the post-Vengeance Raw, so I’m not sure yet if I’m doing Best and Worst for the live experience or the TV version. What do you think?

Please click through to enjoy The Best And Worst Of WWE’s Mexico City Raw. Yeah, it’s a little racist.

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Pre-report notes include:

- I almost called this “The Worst And Worst Of WWE Raw”. Just a heads up.

- We’ve got a new social set-up on the UPROXX Network, so now is a better time to leave a comment than ever. We’re going to start giving away prizes to commenters, so get on that train early. And hey, if you disagree with my assessment of the show, let me know. I’m not “right”, I’m just a fan. At the same time, if you disagree with me, make sure you read the paragraphs that go along with the point you’re pissed about, because at least I’m trying to explain it.

- You are going to need a picture of A.J. so bad by the time you finish this report, so I’m just going to go ahead and put a picture of her (and Kaitlyn, and Derrick Bateman) from the pre-show “Solidarity Rally” in the header. You’ll thank me later.

- If you have a surgical mask of any kind, please place that over your nose and mouth before reading the next page.

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Last night’s episode of WWE Raw caused “anal bleeding” to become a trending topic on Twitter. Sometimes it’s hard to be a wrestling fan.

Here’s a recap of what led to … uh, anal bleeding, for those who weren’t watching. On last week’s show, new World Heavyweight Champion Mark Henry, the 400+ pound “World’s Strongest Man”, harassed and beat up Raw’s announce team, including Jim Ross and 61-year old WWE Hall of Famer Jerry “The King” Lawler, culminating in Henry forecefully body-slamming Lawler through the ringside announcers table. This week, Ross gave us a health update for the absent Lawler — he’s feeling better and should be back next week. Michael Cole, play-by-play man and Jerry Lawler’s eternal enemy, added some late-breaking news … and I quote: “Jerry Lawler is suffering from bruised ribs and with all do respect, anal bleeding.” The statement was met with the expressions you see in the image up top. The world sorta slowed to a halt. What you see on the right is what immediately followed.

The topic built momentum and started trending worldwide, so much so that Cole and Ross acknowledged the success of “anal bleeding” after the next commercial break. Notice that it’s trending alongside SORRY JESUS. Being a trending topic isn’t as prestigious as people make it out to be, sure (especially when a three-year old Disney Channel movie and two Rachel Bilson-centric topics are trending alongside it), but the true humor comes from a world full of people not watching wrestling being suddenly confronted via social media by an embarrassing, unexpected world where jokes about bleeding from the ass aren’t that uncommon.

Here are a few of the “top tweets” from the trend:

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Before we get started with this week’s edition of the Guest and Worst of Raw, a couple notes to cover:

• To reiterate, the delightful Brandon is on vacation and has passed on the responsibility for this week’s recap to myself. Despite being a lifelong wrestling enthusiast, writer and most importantly, vegan, I’m fairly sure I was given this gig due to my ties to Kaiju Big Battel. Kaiju was a touring Vaudvillian show which combined the story structure and live performances of pro wrestling with the showy elements and characters of a Godzilla/Super Sentai movie. Sorta like Extremely Strange Wrestling if it was “watchable,” or Lucha VaVOOM with fewer whores.
• Although it doesn’t justify it’s own bullet point, my time with Kaiju was both as a writer and performer, most notably as the character of Dr. Cube through the majority of the Oughts. Yes, I’m a bit smaller than you think in person; Yes, I was also SuperWrong; and No, that was Chuck Taylor at that one Chikara show. MOVING ON!
• As always, comments are greatly appreciated as they’re a great metric for understanding what works and what doesn’t. That having been said, I should just be honest upfront and let you know that I’m terrified of criticism and will probably avoid the comments section for the next week like Mayweather avoids Pacquiao.
• (Full disclosure, that last sentence read “…like Julie Taymore avoids Gawker Media” until my girlfriend told be to change it to something “more accessible.” Brandon will be back next week, everybody!)
• I’d like to take a moment here to thank Casey Boyd and Andrew Johnson for their help with screen shots and art. Casey even Photoshop’d an image of Andrew “Test” Martin in a Polar Bear suit that I wish I’d gotten to use, but didn’t make the edit. Also, it should go without saying that I want to thank Brandon for the really great work he’s put into these columns. They’re hilarious, and I hope minimally to do right by this column while he’s away. Thanks for the opportunity, Brandon.
• Lastly, I’d like to apologize for the late post, but I’m West Coastin’ it, and was waiting for that Andrew “Test” Martin in a Polar Bear suit art to get back to me.

On to the show…

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