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Archive for the ‘RAW’ Category

Raw easily won its first showdown with TNA Impact on Monday night, now that the second coming of Monday Night Wars has begun officially and in earnest. Raw drew a 3.4 rating and 5.1 million viewers, while Impact managed only a 1.0 rating and 1.4 million viewers head-to-head with Raw.

It’s early and no first-night-upset was expected. A monkey wrench was also thrown into the works, also; History Channel’s runaway hit, Pawn Stars, had its second-season finale on Monday and drew a strong, record-setting 5.8 million viewers, allowing it to edge Raw as the most-watched show in all of cable.

Pawn Stars draws heavily on the same male demographic that Raw and Impact draw, so once next Monday rolls around and Pawn Stars is no longer around during its hiatus, it will be intriguing to see what gains are made by both Raw and Impact. At least we won’t have to see The Old Man on Pawn Stars trying to underbid for a set of 1920s incontinence products. Heh.

The lack of a lineup of guest hosts beyond WrestleMania led us to speculate last week that the concept may be coming to an end; not so! At least, not yet, at any rate.

You can bet your sell merchant account that following Stone Cold’s appearance, the final pre-WrestleMania guest host will be Pete Rose; and the first post-WrestleMania guest host will be two of the stars of the movie Hot Tub Time Machine.

So while changes to Raw may be forthcoming, the guest host concept will live at least one episode past WrestleMania, at any rate…

Jim Ross’ future with WWE should be determined in the next few weeks. Now recovered from his latest bout with Bells Palsy, WWE is laying the groundwork for a potential Ross return to WWE Monday Night Raw. However, Ross has been wondering out loud on his blog whether he can keep up the schedule he used to keep when announcing full-time.

One can expect WWE will want him around at least in the short term, with WrestleMania coming up and Ross being a favorite of several important veterans including, most importantly, Bret Hart.

Also, the risk of releasing Ross right now is higher than ever; with TNA Impact moving permanently to Monday nights, it would take only a couple used travel trailers to get wrestling fans to check out TNA Impact broadcasts with Ross on the play-by-play; he’s be an immediate and meteoric improvement over Mike Tenay.

So it’ll be interesting to see how it all plays out; while WWE seems to be wanting to go younger than Ross, his importance to the success of WWE… or TNA… has never been higher.

On Monday, March 1, Cheech and Chong will be WWE guest hosts, followed by Criss Angel on March 8 opposite the new TNA Monday Night Impact; and then it will be Stone Cold Steve Austin on Monday, March 15.

Right now, there’s no guest host lined up for Monday, March 22, the final Raw before WrestleMania on Sunday, March 28. Could this mean that Stone Cold will be the final Raw guest host? If so, it would be hard to imagine a better guest host to end the concept on.

While WWE has The Rock lined up this summer for a short program, the guest host concept has kind of run its course since it debuted last June. What will WWE try next, to keep its product fresh against Impact?

One guess is that they are probably trying to line up a headline making “general manager of Raw,” returning to a more familiar concept. The smart money would be on Bret “The Hitman” Hart, whose guest host spot against the last experimental TNA Impact on Monday Night fared quite well for WWE.

The only question is whether Hart would be willing to accept a regular role on the show. If so, that would be plenty of impact against Impact, and would have TNA execs running for their diet aids.

The Rock is starting to talk more openly about the nature of his role in a possible return to WWE, on a limited basis, in 2010. While Duane Johnson is in the middle of shooting his latest movie, once production wraps, he is in talks with Vince McMahon to come in and do a guest-host job that could evolve into a limited-run storyline.

The Rock seemingly ruled out John Cena as his potential opponent, but did say he’d want to do something special. By special, he outlined these criteria:

1. It would have to benefit everyone, long-term, including WWE, his opponent and Johnson himself.

2. He would want to rip up the family-friendly script of current WWE product and push the edge back to Attitude-era edginess.

3. His return would not last long; either a one-off or a limited run engagement that would include a couple weeks of build-up, and then a PPV capper.

If handled well, such a storyline could help elevate one of WWE’s up-and-comers; the best potential opponents, in my mind, are Ted DiBiase Jr., Cody Rhodes, Sheamus or MVP. If the program is run against Cena or Randy Orton, I doubt that would benefit WWE quite as much for the future. If Rock returns, perhaps he’ll have a run-in with Stephanie McMahon, calling to mind his role as a face in the McMahon-Helmsley Era storylines. I’m sure Rock would have some great mic-time gifts for her.

The WWE has released a list of upcoming guest hosts of RAW. The list includes a nice mix of celebrities from other areas of sports entertainment, as well as old familiar faces. Here’s the list:

• Jan. 25: Psych stars James Roday and Dule Hill
• Feb. 1: William Shatner
• Feb. 8: NASCAR’s Carl Edwards
• Feb. 15: Jerry Springer
• Mar. 15: Steve Austin

The Psych stars ought to be entertaining, and Jerry Springer could be loads of fun; but the return of Stone Cold Steve Austin is really the broadcast to write home about. It makes all the short term health insurance NC has to offer seem insufficient; he may be retired for close to a decade now, but Stone Cold still dominates!

I do have to admit that in spite of vast anticipation, Raw felt more like a special event on Monday, with the first appearance of Bret Hart on WWE programming in well over a decade, and his first-ever showdown with Shawn Michaels following the Montreal Screw-Job, than any amount of Hulk Hogan debuting on Impact could ever produce.

While both shows felt like 1997 throwbacks, Raw won this first face-off hands down in its degree of creating an event atmosphere. While it’s not like Hart and Michaels wrestled amidst outdoor fireplaces, it was certainly special to see that face-off finally happen.

With the exit from WWE of Shane McMahon, it will be interesting to see how WWE and Tyson’s entourage interact with each other; Shane has historically been the point-person to deal with boxing celebrities and all that comes with them.

Tyson is the scheduled guest host of Raw next Monday, which airs from Minneapolis’ Target Center.

So, if Tyson’s ego is not soothed properly and stuff goes wrong, such as his people not being pleased with the sort of water softener provided them, keep in mind Shane’s departure from WWE and how it might affect the guest host program going forward on Raw, if the Tyson appearance goes south.

Following his third attack of Bells Palsy, a recovering Jim Ross has recently blogged that it may not be an automatic that he’ll return to Smackdown as part of the announce team there. The most natural alternative, then, would be for Ross to return to his old home – Raw – and his long-term broadcast cohort, Jerry Lawler.

While some may light up Davidoff cigars at the suggestion, I’ll stay smoke-free and say that I think reuniting Ross and Lawler on Raw would definitely be the best way to go.

Get well soon, JR! WWE needs you… on Monday nights!

Last week’s Raw introduced a new number one contender to the title picture, as a threat to John Cena’s title. It wasn’t Orton or DX or even Legacy. It wasn’t even Jack Swagger or Evan Bourne. It was… wait for it… Sheamus!

While the storytelling pushed his threat-level to Cena’s title, Sheamus isn’t exactly my first choice when it comes to introducing a new face into the WWE title picture.

I mean, heck, what about someone who’s been picking up momentum and earning his way there for a while, like MVP? Montel Vontavius Porter would be a great match to John Cena, both on the mic and in the ring.

Oh well; Sheamus will be a “one PPV and out” opponent anyway. And the match should be marginally more interesting than colon cleanser reviews.

While the WWE has an eye-catching lineup of female talent, one of the most annoying (and not in a good way) is Jillian Hall, who almost certainly needs to become more familiar with acne treatments. Of course, I’m talking “acne” of the voice… I know it’s intended to be bad… but it is SO bad…

Melina is a far more “livable” diva, since she has no overly annoying gimmick. Eve, Kelly Kelly, Gail Kim and Maryse are also less annoying when it comes to draining screen-time away from the real WWE superstars.

Now is certainly the time to start delivering on what could become one of the marquee feuds of the year; Randy Orton and John Cena are both at exactly the right stages in their careers to headline PPVs all the way between now and Wrestlemania.

While most feuds last less time than that these days, rarely do the top two stars in the company peak at just the right time to be ideal opponents; Austin was older than The Rock, for example, and Andre was older than Hogan by a lot. And even though he’s a long-time wrestler himself, Chris Jericho was much younger last year than Shawn Michaels, who likes to rent his hotels near Disneyland.

While there are a few years separating Orton and Cena, it’s certainly a fitting feud that has enough potential that one could find enough variations on the theme to last through the next WrestleMania. After that, the feud should be back-burnered for a while, but definitely these two superstars have the potential to headline more than even just one WrestleMania.