Black Widow
08-12-2008, 06:32 PM
LOOKING AT A "THEY TAKE THE PG-13 RATING SERIOUSLY BECAUSE THAT SHOW WAS MEANT FOR KIDS, AND SLOW ONES AT THAT" EDITION OF RAW
by Dave Scherer
With one of their top three shows of the year just days away, I expected at least a good show last from Raw. Actually, I really expected a very good show since, after all, they were trying to persuade the masses to buy SummerSlam on Sunday. Instead, I got two hours of largely boring dreck that apparently took the show's new rating seriously as it most certainly was written to capture the attention of 12 year olds. I guess that's fine for the kids but for those of us that are able to think and chew gum at the same time, it made for a boring two hours.
The build up for the brands two biggest matches was largely reduced to a gab-a-thon where the good talkers hardly got to speak while the boring ones dominated long, LONG segments. Other than the pull-apart between John Cena and Dave Batista to end the show, there was nothing that effectively got me to reach for the remote's BUY button on the broadcast. And, by the time that happened, it was too little, too late. They definitely dropped the ball last night.
The Angles:
The opening segment saw John Cena face off with Dave Batista. Cena's promo was his usual, geared-to-kids stuff that really came off weak when being spoken to/about a fellow babyface. It's not as bad when he's saying it to/about a heel but man it came off weak last night. It made me totally apathetic to Sunday's match. But, that is the cross that we have to bear with the "kid's champ" in Cena. Batista, on the other hand, did a great promo and brought some interest back in the match. Unfortunately, he didn't get to speak enough to undo the damage that Cena did.
JBL and CM Punk's promo went on way too long. To make matters worse, JBL (you know, the boring one) controlled the mic for what seemed like eternity. Punk was fine but he only spoke about 1/4 of the time that JBL did so it was not enough to compensate for the Smackdown that JBL laid on my ears. The worst part of the segment was that Punk got heat on JBL at the end, which made me really scared that the title would change hands on Sunday. That would be wrong on every possible level as JBL just does not deserve the strap. If he can't get himself into at least decent shape, he is not worthy of any title other than Competitive Eating Champion.
Just when I thought that the show couldn't get any more lame, they did the Kane "Papa's got a brand new bag" angle. So, it was Rey Mysterio's mask in there all along? Uh, whatever. That is right up there at the top of the list of programs I don't want to see, right under JBL as the champion vs. anyone.
The Matches:
Beth Phoenix pretty much squashed Kelly Kelly, which is understandable given Beth has a match Sunday and Kelly doesn't. That is the problem with having only so many female workers however. There are times when they have to be jobbers and it kills their momentum, which Kelly has certainly had of late. Of course, the match led to Santino beating Mickie, which also was all about Sunday. I still have this feeling that Santino will be the Women's Champ and Beth will be the IC Titlist after SummerSlam.
Cryme Tyme vs. The Joblanders was a squash, plain and simple. Hey, at least The Joblanders still have a paycheck.
Y2J vs. Kane was just plodding along until Mike Adamle and company came out. Then, they went to the finish. It was OK, but nothing special.
William Regal vs. Jamie Noble was short but it was still the best thing on the show, by far, up until that point. The pull-apart at the end was probably better, but nothing else came close. That is sad.
Well, this show ended the way it should have, with me hating the booking in the main event. Sure, Cena and Batista lost the tag belts back but Cody Rhodes and Ted DiBiase came out of it looking lucky and unimportant. The whole story here was that Cena and Batista lost because they couldn't work together. That means the new champs were just lucky, and clearly puts them well below the former champs on the company hierarchy. What a brilliant way to book young guys they want the fans to get behind. As mentioned earlier, the only positive of it was the pull-apart that they did to end the show.
What to watch if you DVR'd the show:
Nothing. You can skip this whole show.
Rhetorical and Unanswered Questions:
When Cena said poof, out of nowhere, he has a match with Dave Batista, was that his way of describing the lamer part of the creative process?
If Cena is so into the military, why doesn't he just join the Marines or something?
When Cena said that he and Batista was six years in the making, shouldn't they have spent more than six hours building it up?
Then again, after Cena's promo, given how they have spent the six hours they had pushing the match, are my expectations of what could have been a bit inflated?
Given his often lame promos, shouldn't Cena be the last guy to make fun of Smackdown angles?
Wasn't Batista great when he said how Cena does goofy stuff and panders to kids?
And, didn't he do a great job on his promo to try and make up for the lame one that Cena did?
Honestly, had ANY of you heard of a CINE award before Raw last night?
And, couldn't they have come up with something better than a "Golden Eagle" award?
What, was the "Purple Falcon" already taken?
Isn't GlamorElla a pretty cool name?
Didn't you know that Santino was actually challenging Mickie, not Kofi?
What was with the ref doing a four count during the Mickie-Santino match?
Isn't Santino hilarious when he goes nuts after pinning a woman?
Adamle and Ronald Reagan, really?
Is Adamle the only guy in WWE too stupid to be afraid of Kane?
Why would Kane want to Chris Jericho last night when he could get a big bonus if he did the match on Sunday instead?
If you were Kane and you knew that Adamle was going to take your bag, wouldn't you just given him one with old eggs or dog crap in it?
Do you really care if more people watched Smackdown than the X Games last week?
And, even though they had three times the audience, how did they feel about the fact that X Games probably brought in more advertising dollars?
How about the fact that 35 million watched the opening ceremony of the Olympics?
Why didn't they mention that?
Does anyone, and I mean, ANYONE, believe that Tito Santana and Ivan Putski vs. The Valiants was "thrilling"?
How sad is it that Cody Rhodes made a point of saying that Cena and Batista weren't a team, yet they still lost to them last week?
Shouldn't you have your phone taken away if you texted that lame "Who is the bigger star" poll?
Wait a second, the Highlanders still work for WWE?
How did they make it past cut-down Friday?
Was anyone else shocked that they didn't call Randy Orton a dumbass when they mentioned he was re-injured?
When JBL announced the contest that Punk couldn't win, did you think it was a donut eating competition?
Or an race to see who could put everyone in the arena to sleep first just by talking?
So, after slamming Punk for his start in the business, did JBL forget that he broke in at a dumpy little no name indy in Texas, as John Hawk?
Does WWE really want to have a heel mock someone for living a clean lifestyle?
Really?
By this point in the show, was anyone else wondering when Vince Russo came back to Stamford?
Did anyone not see Punk throwing the Jack Daniels in JBL's face?
And, would it shock you to hear that I typed that about five minutes before he actually did it?
Wow, did the fans really bring back the lame "What" chants?
Then again, were they any lamer than Mike Adamle playing Dr. Phil for Kane?
Was anyone else hoping that Kane had a gun in the bag so he could just shoot Adamle (and then creative) and just make it all stop?
Rey Mysterio's mask? That was it? Really?
What does it tell you when the best thing on Raw, by far, was the Smackdown Rebound?
Didn't any of the brain surgeons in creative realize that while Cena and Batista were one-upping each other, they made Rhodes and DiBiase look like jobbers?
Didn't they get that even though they won the titles back, they were hardly put over?
And, did they have to make sure we knew that the new champs were second tier by doing the post-match beatdown?
What happened to the creative group that wrote Raw for the month or so after the draft?
by Dave Scherer
With one of their top three shows of the year just days away, I expected at least a good show last from Raw. Actually, I really expected a very good show since, after all, they were trying to persuade the masses to buy SummerSlam on Sunday. Instead, I got two hours of largely boring dreck that apparently took the show's new rating seriously as it most certainly was written to capture the attention of 12 year olds. I guess that's fine for the kids but for those of us that are able to think and chew gum at the same time, it made for a boring two hours.
The build up for the brands two biggest matches was largely reduced to a gab-a-thon where the good talkers hardly got to speak while the boring ones dominated long, LONG segments. Other than the pull-apart between John Cena and Dave Batista to end the show, there was nothing that effectively got me to reach for the remote's BUY button on the broadcast. And, by the time that happened, it was too little, too late. They definitely dropped the ball last night.
The Angles:
The opening segment saw John Cena face off with Dave Batista. Cena's promo was his usual, geared-to-kids stuff that really came off weak when being spoken to/about a fellow babyface. It's not as bad when he's saying it to/about a heel but man it came off weak last night. It made me totally apathetic to Sunday's match. But, that is the cross that we have to bear with the "kid's champ" in Cena. Batista, on the other hand, did a great promo and brought some interest back in the match. Unfortunately, he didn't get to speak enough to undo the damage that Cena did.
JBL and CM Punk's promo went on way too long. To make matters worse, JBL (you know, the boring one) controlled the mic for what seemed like eternity. Punk was fine but he only spoke about 1/4 of the time that JBL did so it was not enough to compensate for the Smackdown that JBL laid on my ears. The worst part of the segment was that Punk got heat on JBL at the end, which made me really scared that the title would change hands on Sunday. That would be wrong on every possible level as JBL just does not deserve the strap. If he can't get himself into at least decent shape, he is not worthy of any title other than Competitive Eating Champion.
Just when I thought that the show couldn't get any more lame, they did the Kane "Papa's got a brand new bag" angle. So, it was Rey Mysterio's mask in there all along? Uh, whatever. That is right up there at the top of the list of programs I don't want to see, right under JBL as the champion vs. anyone.
The Matches:
Beth Phoenix pretty much squashed Kelly Kelly, which is understandable given Beth has a match Sunday and Kelly doesn't. That is the problem with having only so many female workers however. There are times when they have to be jobbers and it kills their momentum, which Kelly has certainly had of late. Of course, the match led to Santino beating Mickie, which also was all about Sunday. I still have this feeling that Santino will be the Women's Champ and Beth will be the IC Titlist after SummerSlam.
Cryme Tyme vs. The Joblanders was a squash, plain and simple. Hey, at least The Joblanders still have a paycheck.
Y2J vs. Kane was just plodding along until Mike Adamle and company came out. Then, they went to the finish. It was OK, but nothing special.
William Regal vs. Jamie Noble was short but it was still the best thing on the show, by far, up until that point. The pull-apart at the end was probably better, but nothing else came close. That is sad.
Well, this show ended the way it should have, with me hating the booking in the main event. Sure, Cena and Batista lost the tag belts back but Cody Rhodes and Ted DiBiase came out of it looking lucky and unimportant. The whole story here was that Cena and Batista lost because they couldn't work together. That means the new champs were just lucky, and clearly puts them well below the former champs on the company hierarchy. What a brilliant way to book young guys they want the fans to get behind. As mentioned earlier, the only positive of it was the pull-apart that they did to end the show.
What to watch if you DVR'd the show:
Nothing. You can skip this whole show.
Rhetorical and Unanswered Questions:
When Cena said poof, out of nowhere, he has a match with Dave Batista, was that his way of describing the lamer part of the creative process?
If Cena is so into the military, why doesn't he just join the Marines or something?
When Cena said that he and Batista was six years in the making, shouldn't they have spent more than six hours building it up?
Then again, after Cena's promo, given how they have spent the six hours they had pushing the match, are my expectations of what could have been a bit inflated?
Given his often lame promos, shouldn't Cena be the last guy to make fun of Smackdown angles?
Wasn't Batista great when he said how Cena does goofy stuff and panders to kids?
And, didn't he do a great job on his promo to try and make up for the lame one that Cena did?
Honestly, had ANY of you heard of a CINE award before Raw last night?
And, couldn't they have come up with something better than a "Golden Eagle" award?
What, was the "Purple Falcon" already taken?
Isn't GlamorElla a pretty cool name?
Didn't you know that Santino was actually challenging Mickie, not Kofi?
What was with the ref doing a four count during the Mickie-Santino match?
Isn't Santino hilarious when he goes nuts after pinning a woman?
Adamle and Ronald Reagan, really?
Is Adamle the only guy in WWE too stupid to be afraid of Kane?
Why would Kane want to Chris Jericho last night when he could get a big bonus if he did the match on Sunday instead?
If you were Kane and you knew that Adamle was going to take your bag, wouldn't you just given him one with old eggs or dog crap in it?
Do you really care if more people watched Smackdown than the X Games last week?
And, even though they had three times the audience, how did they feel about the fact that X Games probably brought in more advertising dollars?
How about the fact that 35 million watched the opening ceremony of the Olympics?
Why didn't they mention that?
Does anyone, and I mean, ANYONE, believe that Tito Santana and Ivan Putski vs. The Valiants was "thrilling"?
How sad is it that Cody Rhodes made a point of saying that Cena and Batista weren't a team, yet they still lost to them last week?
Shouldn't you have your phone taken away if you texted that lame "Who is the bigger star" poll?
Wait a second, the Highlanders still work for WWE?
How did they make it past cut-down Friday?
Was anyone else shocked that they didn't call Randy Orton a dumbass when they mentioned he was re-injured?
When JBL announced the contest that Punk couldn't win, did you think it was a donut eating competition?
Or an race to see who could put everyone in the arena to sleep first just by talking?
So, after slamming Punk for his start in the business, did JBL forget that he broke in at a dumpy little no name indy in Texas, as John Hawk?
Does WWE really want to have a heel mock someone for living a clean lifestyle?
Really?
By this point in the show, was anyone else wondering when Vince Russo came back to Stamford?
Did anyone not see Punk throwing the Jack Daniels in JBL's face?
And, would it shock you to hear that I typed that about five minutes before he actually did it?
Wow, did the fans really bring back the lame "What" chants?
Then again, were they any lamer than Mike Adamle playing Dr. Phil for Kane?
Was anyone else hoping that Kane had a gun in the bag so he could just shoot Adamle (and then creative) and just make it all stop?
Rey Mysterio's mask? That was it? Really?
What does it tell you when the best thing on Raw, by far, was the Smackdown Rebound?
Didn't any of the brain surgeons in creative realize that while Cena and Batista were one-upping each other, they made Rhodes and DiBiase look like jobbers?
Didn't they get that even though they won the titles back, they were hardly put over?
And, did they have to make sure we knew that the new champs were second tier by doing the post-match beatdown?
What happened to the creative group that wrote Raw for the month or so after the draft?