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Posts Tagged ‘RAW’

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.

People washing their hands in a glass sink shouldn’t throw… stones? Whatever; the point is that there are some big changes on the way for ECW that could conceivably improve that show’s standing in the ratings.

Traditionally, ECW tapings have been the “warm-up act” for Smackdown shows, ever since the WWE brought ECW back a couple years ago. However, the company recently unveiled a plan to move ECW tapings from Tuesday nights with the Smackdown brand to Monday nights with the Raw brand.

There are some natural fallouts of this strategy, of course. First, it means curtains for WWE Heat. Second, it means more cameos on ECW tapings by Raw-branded WWE superstars, and fewer by Smackdown-branded superstars.

This is a huge hit against the Smackdown brand; not only is it moving from The CW this fall to MyNetworkTV, a huge step down, but it is losing the extra draw the ECW brand brought to its tapings. While details like two ECW superstars currently holding the Smackdown-branded WWE tag team titles are sure to be worked out before the switch is made, one can only hope that the switch will also means Raw and ECW won’t brand-blend to the extent that Smackdown and ECW did.

For me, that diluted both brands. I’d hate to see RAW dragged down that path. No start-date has been announced just yet.

I hate to say it, but I’m already bored with the whole King Regal bit. While it made for a nice shocking moment the first time Regal ended Raw early, mid-match, the whole ongoing bit of turning out the ring lights and stopping good promos and good matches (while the bad ones seem to still go on uninterrupted) has quickly worn thin.

Regal’s power trip is about as intriguing as a natural acne treatment video to a senior citizen, and it’s ruining important moments in the Raw broadcast. The most blatent example of this from last night’s Raw was when Regal shut down the first promo Jeff Hardy has cut since returning from a two-month suspension related to the WWE’s Wellness Policy.

That was an important moment in re-establishing Hardy’s character, so having it cut off was more than just an angle; it cheated the crowd. Wherever this is headed with Regal, it needs to be over soon, since this is not creating the good type of “nasty villain” heat, but is actually resulting in viewer apathy, since it seems like any time a promo or match gets interesting, they pull the “Regal cuts the power” angle.

Drop it, fast, Vince!

WWE star Chris Jericho deserves more than the minor spotlight he’s receiving on Monday Night Raw so far. His cross-brand fued with MVP was hot, but Jericho is someone who deserves a bit more of a shot at a title that’s not of the USA/International variety.

As a veteran, Jericho exemplifies good mic skills combined with an electrifying personality and decent, if not exactly spectacular, matt skills. Sure, he’s no John Cena, but the best thing the company could do right now is rest Cena from the main event spotlight and rebuild his character in a way that might reduce the booing. Sort of like the effect of keepnig the blinds closed during the nasty winter months so that when you open them again in the spring, you appreciate the sunshine and the look of the outside a bit more than you did before.

Meanwhile, with Triple H the current champion, he needs some fresh faces to challenge him and Triple H-Jericho is a fued that hasn’t been overplayed much; in fact, the two have rarely been opponents. Here’s hoping someone with some sense finally gives Jericho an extended push instead of having him get slapped around as part of other wrestlers’ fueds in The Highlight Reel.

Talk about trying to RAM a screwjob down our throats? While I was thrilled to see the King of the Ring return a couple weeks ago, and on a free Raw broadcast, no less, I was vastly disappointed with the booking.

While King of the Ring has often been used to anoint the WWE’s next big heel, all it was used for this time around was to further the career of a well-past-his-prime wrestler and Raw general manager, William Regal. Regal didn’t need the King of the Ring crown to get over with the crowd; he’s been around long enough that he’s as over as he’s going to get.

Of all the possible endings for the latest edition of the King of the Ring event, giving the crown to William Regal after stacking the events and matchups in his own favor, was perhaps the worst of all possible endings, save except for an ending that would have put the crown on Hacksaw Jim Duggan.

WWE’s Chris Jericho proved on last Monday’s RAW broadcast from England that he has the potential to pull off one of the quickest heel turns of all time. All he had to do was walk out on stage to Ric Flair’s entrance music and begin to cut a promo against Shawn Michaels.

Although Michaels is working a program against SmackDown’s Dave Batista at Backlash, the groundwork is already being laid for a Jericho-HBK feud that could help headline Raw-branded events throughout the summer. Both men are ring veterans who know how to work a match, work the ring psychology to get the crowd on its feet, and both cut excellent promos.

If this is going somewhere, I’m ready for it. And Jericho can just be glad that Michaels wasn’t wearing golf shoes when he performed that Super Kick to Jericho’s jaw.

One of the biggest risks in professional wrestling is the decision to turn a bad guy good, or a good guy bad. Usually, this is done when a star’s career is faltering, or thier gimmick simply isn’t getting them over with the crowd. Sometimes it works quite well; other tmies, it can be a career killer.

None of those situations describe the career of “the Legend Killer,” Randy Orton. Despite a brief stint as a babyface when he was breaking away from the Evolution group a few years ago, Orton has remained comfortably over with the crowd ever since he delivered a Legend Killer finishing move on WWE Diva Stacy Keibler to cement his heel status.

That momentum eventually lead to Orton being the heir apparent last fall when John Cena went down with a career-stalling injury. Initially seen as a “transitionary champion,” until the return of bigger stars like Triple H or John Cena, Orton shed that label and cemented the WWE’s choice to put the belt on him by giving him the win over both men at WrestleMania last month.

So why mess with a winning formula? It’s not like Orton’s career needs a figurative cell phone repeater to boost his image even more. Yet consider the evidence.

At WrestleMania, many fans cheered Orton and booed Cena, due to Cena’s career suffering from overexposure. (The same thing happened to The Rock, in his day.) And on last Monday’s RAW, the initial makeup of the Backlash main event was going to be Randy Orton versus JBL; both are heel characters as currently promoted, and JBL’s character would seem to be the hardest one to turn.

Granted, later in the segment, Triple H came out and inserted himself into the Backlash main event picture, but even Triple H is a borderline face at best, since he is most notoriously known for his extended hardcore heel run of five years ago, a run that set the mold for hardcore heel runs the likes of which Randy Orton has been on for the last couple years.

WWE could have protected Orton’s heel status by matching him up against a true face, like Jeff Hardy or Chris Jericho. Instead, the company is pitting Orton against all-out or borderline heels. Ultimately, they may just be testmarketing a face turn for the Legend Killer champion.

Could the biggest heel wrestler of the last year or more, Umaga, be moving off WWE Raw to the SmackDown brand? That’s the word on the street; the move is expected to take place sometime within the next month or two, now that WrestleMania is over.

This is a time of year when WWE typically likes to shuffle the deck and freshen up all its brands. With SmackDown apparently set to move from The CW to MyNetworkTV in the fall, a changeup to make the SmackDown brand stronger is long past due.

The makeover started at WrestleMania, with Undertaker winning the World Heavyweight title from Edge. With a new champion, new opponents will be needed and the Umaga character, a primitive, force-of-nature style of heel, would make an ideal foe if ‘Taker’s run is to be an extended one.

Although often portrayed as a beastial, monstrous heel, Umaga has lost most of his meaningful matches in the past year for storyline purposes and has become overused and less of a threat on RAW; by moving the Branson golf-loving heel to SmackDown, the company has a chance to rebuild Umaga’s character from the ground up.

Time will tell if this rumor is accurate, but Umaga’s WrestleMania match against SmackDown’s Batista for brand supremacy, which Umaga lost, would seem to set the stage for a brand-switch move.

I haven’t been a big fan of the tired, old storyline involving WWE Diva Maria and one-time InterContinental Champ Santino Marella; the abusive. controlling boyfriend vs. compliant beauty storyline has been done to death over the years, with probably Macho Man Randy Savage/Miss Elizabeth and Marc and Rena Mero being the most successful iterations of it.

Yet I must say that it doesn’t require the services of a CAT5e to suss out the in-ring improvements Maria has shown; her recent matches finally have her pulling off enough convincing moves to rank her right up there with other battlin’ WWE divas like Candace Michelle, Mickie James and Melina. Sure, none of them really measure up to the days of Lita and Trish Stratus, but hey… those days are long gone now.

Everyone’s talking about Floyd “Money” Mayweather vs. the Big Show like boxer vs. wrestler is something that’s never been done before, yet the tradition extends all the way back to Muhammad Ali vs. Antonio Inoki back in 1976. Inoki wasn’t allowed to use any wrestling moves. Other famous boxer-wrestler tilts from years past include Andre the Giant vs. Chuck Wepner, Muhammad Ali vs. Kenny Jay, Muhammad Ali vs. Gorilla Monsoon, and more recently (and embarrassingly), Bart Gunn vs. Butterbean.

Many boxer-vs.-wrestler matches end up being pretty embarrassing for the wrestler in question. Andre vs. Wepner involved Wepner being tossed from the ring and left in such condition that he had to use shower chairs after the match. Ali vs. Inoki ended in a draw, a finish that satisfied fans from both sides somewhat at least. But Gunn vs. Butterbean ended in less than a minute and left Gunn with no respect and, ultimately, no career after that. Gunn was about half the size of Butterbean.

The Mayweather vs. Big Show tilt looks to be an Andre/Wepner style mismatch, only worse… this time for the boxer. Mayweather stands 5’8″ and weighs around 155. Big Show is right around 7 feet tall and still weighs around 420. So Big Show has well over a foot and nearly three times the weight as Mayweather; Big Show’s open hand is nearly as big as Mayweather’s head.

What this likely means, in addition to a $20 million payday for Mayweather, is another embarrassing episode in boxer-wrestler history, rather than anything approaching a legit mixed martial arts contest. There are only a couple ways I see this going down.

First, it could be a crush by the Big Show, with him completely dominating and quickly defeating Mayweather. Give the size differential, this would be believable as a finish, but would do nothing to help Mayweather’s career as a boxer.

Second is even more embarrassing for sports entertainment in general and the Big Show personally; and that would be for a man of Mayweather’s size to take Big Show down in flukey but similarly swift fashion.

What I don’t see happening is a longer, more legit match; the injury risk to Mayweather is too great, and given his upcoming boxing title defense in August, it’s unlikely Mayweather would agree to anything like that. So no matter who gets squashed here, I expect it to be a blink-and-miss-it event that will disappoint and annoy fans of both wrestling and boxing.

Still, Vince McMahon always knows how to get the non-wrestling sports press talking right around WrestleMania time every year; last year, it was McMahon vs. Trump in a hair match; this year, it’s Mayweather vs. Big Show.

While a 4.0 in the Nielsens is no big whoop for most network shows, it packs the equivalent whallop of an ECA stack for Monday Night Raw, which has been riding the low 3.0 range for the past few months during the writer’s strike.

Now that the strike is over, people seem to be coming back to TV again, and that includes wrestling. While WWE Raw is by no means riding high with a 4.0, considering they were drawing almost three times that number at their peak about a decade ago, it’s still an impressive number.

Of course, this is pre-WrestleMania season and interest in the Fed always seems to take a leap up at this time of year, no matter what else is going on. Let’s hope the new viewers like what they are seeing and tell a few friends just how good Cena, Orton and Hardy can be, when they set their minds to it.