Hey guys, FallenAngel88 here again to review what happened on Raw this week. Before I get to that, I'd like to give you guys kind of a schedule for how my columns are going to go from here on out. Now, I have a lot of time on my hands these days. I'm taking a break from college and trying to find a job, but with the economy how it is I don't know when that will happen. Until then, a lot of time is dedicated to my PS3 and wrestling. I spend a lot of time watching people on the youtube wrestling community (including Jeff Meacham and his awesome Talk Wrestling show), and I'm going to be spending a lot of time writing in this column. Now as far as what wrestling shows I watch, I almost always catch WWE Raw and TNA Impact, so you can expect reviews of both of those shows on a weekly basis. If I happen to catch ECW or Smackdown, which is more likely since it's Wrestlemania season, I will review those as well, but more than likely in a combined column. I don't have a TV, so I usually stream these shows or catch them on youtube the next day, but my reviews should be up here promptly enough. Occasionally I'd like to do some rants, maybe some DVD reviews, and anything else you guys would like me to discuss. Just message me your feedback. I'll provide my e-mail address at the bottom of each of my reviews. With all that being said, onto my review of Raw.
Tonight's show was pretty good. I don't know what it is, but Raw has just been better in just about every way since the start of the new year. 2009 was just a such a lousy year for the brand that I'm glad to see things are starting to look up. Now this was far from a perfect show, I'll admit. The wrestling was actually pretty awesome, but the segments felt very few and far between. As you'll come to expect of me, I tend to like a mixture between the storylines and the wrestling, which is why I probably like TNA more than other wrestling companies, but I digress.
Raw opened with a short little introduction of the host, Hornswoggle...I mean, Carl Edwards. I'm not a Nascar fan or anything, but this guy came off great on the mic. I almost wish they would have given this guy more time, because he definitely had what it took to be an entertaining host. Although it's hard to top Mr. Shatner's performance from last week. Eventually Sheamus comes out and gets in this guy's face about how awesome he thinks he is, and then we get the pleasant surprise of Christian showing up to butt heads with the evil Ronald McDonald himself. I get a kick out of the jokes they make about Sheamus, even though I really do think he's a good wrestler, and I'm glad the crowd actually was into him as a heel tonight.
So the opening match saw Christian and Sheamus going one-on-one. I thought this was a great match for how long it was. I'm starting to think Christian is really good at working with bigger guys like Sheamus and Ezekiel Jackson...something I've never really noticed before. Anyways, Sheamus did end up winning this match cleanly, which I didn't really like, but at least it helps build his credibility. As far as what Christian said before the match pertaining to the current ECW roster joining the other two brands, I think that will be pretty interesting. I mean, no one on the ECW brand currently really interests me besides Christian, Shelton Benjamin, and William Regal, so I'm guessing WWE is going to have some lay-offs coming up. Hopefully some will stay once it turns into WWE NXT, because I don't know how much I would like to see a bunch of no-name wrestlers from Florida every week. Oh wait, we already get that...damn.
Anyways, on with Raw. Sorry, I get side-tracked easily. We had a couple great segments here before the next match. DX were furthering their story between Shawn Michaels and the Undertaker, and you just knew that this was probably the last night DX was going to be together. Then the backstage segment with Legacy was awesome. It was great seeing these guys bounce off each other with their "I'm better than you" points. I think this is starting to shape into a really interesting storyline between these guys.
Next we had the Unified Tag Team Titles match between DX, the Straight-Edge Society, and the newly-named "ShowMiz." I knew DX were going to drop the titles tonight, but I actually thought that the Straight-Edge Society would capture these titles. Unfortunately we saw Big Show and the Miz winning out. I'm not against this decision, but I just don't see these guys being a good tag team together. JeriShow had such chemistry and charisma that it's going to be tough for this new union to top the old. After this match we saw a backstage segment with Shawn Michaels, and I think this was the highlight of the night. Maybe it's because HBK is my favorite wrestler, but this actually gave me chills. Shawn found Teddy Long backstage and was basically begging him to go to Smackdown and replace someone in the Elimination Chamber. Triple H walked up and tried to calm him down, but Shawn Michaels ended up super-kicking Long and telling Triple H that "his career is over." This feud is just so awesome to me. We all know HBK and Undertaker will end up facing off at Wrestlemania, but I'm more interested in the journey rather than the destination.
We had a Divas match up next. If you read my last column you'll know that I don't care much for 95% of the Divas in the WWE, so whenever there's a match with them, unless it's really interesting, I'm just going to skip over it. I'll say this though, if Gail Kim beats Maryse at Elimination Chamber, I'll start watching the Divas matches and critique them in a way where I don't think that they're just a bunch of beautiful women thrown in the ring who don't know how to wrestle. Not all of them fall under that category, but most of them do, unfortunately.
Moving on we have a match between Cody Rhodes and Randy Orton. I was so disappointed in how short this match was, because it was great while it lasted. We even saw Cody Rhodes get the upset victory over Randy Orton when Sheamus showed up at ringside. I'm not really sure why Sheamus and Orton are having such an intense feud, and the fact that Jerry Lawler mentioned that Rhodes and Sheamus might be a unit seemed kind of far-fetched to me. I don't know if I could see that happening or would even want to see that happen.
Finally we come to the main event, which wasn't really a match at all. Cena just came out, assaulted DiBiase, and pretty much put him in the STF until he was down and out. Then we were treated to another really awesome promo between Cena and Vince McMahon. Apparently my Wrestlemania match predictions were wrong, and it sounds like we'll be seeing a match between Bret Hart and Vince McMahon at Wrestlemania. I'm not sure how they'll go about this, however, as Vince changed his mind at the last second after agreeing to a match, and stated that he just enjoys screwing Bret. Bret then started thrashing around equipment and things similarly to what he did following the Montreal Screwjob, which didn't really do anything for me. Bret doesn't come off as a vengeful man in his older age, and the fact that they're actually going to have a match between him and Vince is just such a bad idea to me. I mean, if it lasts longer than 5 minutes then I think this could be one of the worst matches in Wrestlemania history. Not the build-up or anything, but the match itself. Let's hope things end up being as I predicted with Bret in Cena's corner vs Vince in Batista's corner, because neither Bret nor Vince have what it takes to put on an interesting match anymore.
So with that you have this episode of Raw in the books. Like I said it was a pretty good episode, but it just felt like something was missing to make it great. I can't quite put my finger on it, but needless to say I'm excited to see where things are going to go between now and the Elimination Chamber PPV. With that I'll leave you all to catch Raw, if you can. It's definitely worth checking out. If nothing else you should at least check out the segments with Shawn Michaels and the main event skit between Cena and Vince. Otherwise I'll be back on Thursday or Friday with my Impact review. Until then, catch you guys later. Oh yeah, and big congratulations are in order to Ted DiBiase Sr. on his Hall of Fame induction. It's long overdue.
-FallenAngel88
E-Mail: Fairgrim27@hotmail.com
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