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Posts Tagged ‘RAW’

The next three guest hosts for Raw have been announced; apparently the guest host concept is alive and well, despite Raw naming Bret Hard the new Raw general manager.

Next Monday, Ashton Kutcher will appear to host and promote his new movie, The Killers. After that, there will be a three-hour Raw on June 7 featuring the cast of the new A-Team movie, which includes UFC fighter Quinton “Rampage” Jackson in the Mister T role, as well as Bradley Cooper and Sharlto Copley.

Finally, Royal Pains star Mark Feuerstein will host on June 14 in a tidy cross-promotion between Raw and the USA dramedy. With a lineup like this, it looks like Bret Hart won’t have to work too hard as the new Raw GM after all. Guess he won’t have to peruse the PA job listings any time soon, then! Good deal!

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.

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.

Although I think it was clear to most people that Donald Trump “buying” Raw from Vince McMahon was a storyline designed to raise viewer interest in WWE’s product, apparently Wall Street is full of rubes who needed that spelled out for them after the twist ending of the three-hour Raw broadcast of a couple weeks ago. Of course, the WWE did confuse things by issuing that phony press release regarding the sale of Raw to Mr. Trump, but hey, it’s the June curse.

June was when WWE ill-advisedly tried to sell as “real” storylines in which Vince McMahon was killed (twice) as well as other storyline twists that ended up being bad, bad ideas. Still, the Trump thing seemed a bit more obvious so maybe some Wall Street rubes were just bored. But, hey, that’s the WWE treadmill for you; while the details change, there is a season for everything, including storylines that require retraction and clarification.

Welcome to June.

I have to admit that last week’s Raw did a good job of promoting the best aspects of both the upcoming No Way Out PPV and this coming week’s Raw broadcast.

While such promotion ought to be second-nature to WWE after all these years, sadly the writers and promoters don’t always put in the effort necessary to do the job well and come off like a bunch of industrial knobs, rather than working professionals.

Yet last Monday, they did their job well; the Jericho-Roarke angle was moved forward, the JBL-Michael angle pushed No Way Out rather than giving something away for free, and a skit angle promoted a rare crossover appearance by the Undertaker on Raw.

That’s hitting on all cylinders.

Chris Jericho dropped the bombshell on Daddy’s Little Girl last week on Raw: none other than Vinnie Mac himself is returning to Raw tonight, and with the run-up to WrestleMania in full swing, the timing is just right.

How successful McMahon’s run will be depends largely upon how it’s handled. In recent years, Vinnie Mac on Raw means his presence covers over undercard wrestler appearances like a set of area rugs. They overkill his presence and refocus the entire broadcast around him.

That’s not healthy for a promotion that should be about getting the in-ring talent over. So here’s my list of suggestions for making Vinnie Mac’s return a welcome visit.

1) No more fake deaths/murders.

2) Keep his appearances brief, intense, and rare.

3) Write him back out of the storylines after WrestleMania and keep him gone after that until he’s really, actually needed again.

WWE Raw will air its 800th episode tonight and that leaves one wondering what the Fed will dream up to celebrate. Right now, the only announced match is between JBL and Batista.

That’s a promo on diet pills if you ask me; for an 800th episode, they ought to have a lot more than that in store.

And by the time Raw hits the air tonight, I’m sure they will.

Vince McMahon and WWE are long-term experts at taking lemons and turning them into lemonade. The Rock was hated when he first began his WWE career, and not in a good, heel-ish way; he eventually became one of WWE’s most popular wrestlers and certainly, now, the most successful former wrestler ever to move to Hollywood and take on acting. And The Rock is only one such example.

Their latest project could be their biggest challenge, however; some folks will remember Mike Adamle from his days hosting the original incarnation of American Gladiators. After several years of relative obscurity following that show’s demise, Adamle emerged in WWE earlier this year as an interviewer, and eventually an ECW play-by-play announcer.

His stint as announcer was plagued by mistakes and gaffes that showcased his lack of a wrestling background, as well as his unfamiliarity with the WWE roster. His appeal was roughly that of an air conditioning compressor.

However, since being named the surprise new GM of Raw, Adamle seems to be getting a second chance, this time utilizing his weaknesses with the hope to turn them around to strengths. So Adamle doesn’t know the WWE roster that well? Put him in skits that have him directly interacting with members of that roster. Adamle is hated? Make him the heel GM of Raw so that fans booing him fits in with his role.

Smart booking could help Adamle succeed as a heel GM of Raw, and this past week’s Raw did that pretty well, hot-shotting three title defenses onto one night. And if Adamle screws up again and says that a 2-on-1 handicap match against a face champion with title match implications has “never been done before?” Well, all the more reason to boo him.

It’s risky, but it gives Adamle a new shot at finding a niche in the company. It’ll be interesting to watch. And just let me suggest a bit of booking myself: a lot of people wouldn’t mind seeing some WWE talent beat the crap of out Mike Adamle. Whether it’s Punk or someone else, I’m not saying, I’m just saying… what’s good enough for Vinnie Mac is good enough for Adamle, right?

I’m a fan of the McMahon family and their involvement in the TV storylines, but I must admit that their extended absence has been a good thing for RAW and SmackDown.

Sometimes, too much of them on TV is simply too much and their prescence becomes about as welcome as commercial collection agencies at a Debtors Anonymous meeting.

That’s why I hope they don’t rush Vince back to his on-camera roll. The shows are more fun and less predictable now, and I’d like to see WWE run with this concept for a while longer.

Who knows? Maybe when they finally bring Vince back, they’ll even find a way to make his character fresh and unpredictable.

After a five year absence from a WWE ring, D’Lo Brown finally returned to Monday Night Raw last week. Hold your enthusiasm, please. I know, I know, it’s not like The Rock has come back, nor even Chyna…. D’Lo Brown, at his best, was a slightly-above-average midlist wrestler.

But hey, he looked clean, fresh and energetic in a feel-good return match against Santino Marella and maybe he’ll even have a chance to get a bit of a push this time ’round. You never know, stranger things have happened… like Stephanie McMahon wearing religious jewelry.

While Batista winning the Fatal Four-Way main event on Raw to become the number one contender and set up a Punk vs. Batista main event at Great American Bash was a refreshing change of pace, the single weirdest booking moment came after the match, when Kane, among the losers of the Fatal Four-Way, put on a fairly good act of going apeshit, beating up ringside officials and the announce crew to express his disappointment.

I swear, he’d have hit Mae Young with a pella pan if he’d had the opportunity. It was an odd moment.

Odd because it seems to be the centerpiece toward setting Kane up to be a main eventer once again, which frankly doesn’t do a whole lot for me. Kane’s been main-event pushed for well over a decade now, and to be honest, he hasn’t had much mystique since he stopped wearing the mask. Although a faithful and yeomanlike worker, his star just hasn’t shone very brightly … not for quite a while.

Considering that most of Raw was a beginner’s primer, set up to welcome new viewers to the show, rolling out Kane as a monster main eventer in this way is out-of-place with the show’s new direction and certainly won’t help anyone who may have watched 10 years ago feel like much has changed in WWE since the last time they watched regularly.