A (planned) Quick One ... but these CAN get long.

So I've been w/o internet for a week now, and a lot of interesting things have happened in the WWE universe, which tempts me to write a long piece catching everyone up. But it's late, I need to look for work and answer about a week's worth of email, and I now have WWE 24/7 to spend some time with (an AWESOME investment, btw, with lots of opportunity to watch some great classic wrestling - check out their current offering of King of the Ring 1994, if you have it, to see TRULY shitty commentary that makes Mike Adamle look good - but some of the best wrestling of the early-to-mid 1990s era). So as of right now, my intent now is just to hit the big points of wrestling the last couple weeks and go more in-depth as of Raw tomorrow night ... as my lack of telecommunications equipment at home precluded me seeing Raw last week and I have just now caught up on reading it. I will start, as I believe I promised last post, with ...

The Supplementary Draft
This was OK - they've done a decent job of balancing out the brands and shaking things up. I'm a little annoyed they didn't re-unite the pre-draft announce teams here, as I've become quite attached at least to the King/JR pairing and Cole/Foley was doing a great job too, but meh, I'll withhold judgement as always until seeing more of the new Raw and SD announce teams and how they work together.

Night of Champions PPV
I did get to check this out, and thank Christ it was good, as it was an adventure to find a movie theatre in town that showed it let me tell you - it wasn't playing at our typical venue so we had to go across town and missed the first 15 mins. of it. But a good show overall, my main concern being that they didn't correct the major title imbalance - but they did the next night as we will discuss. Some great wrestling, good work, I enjoyed the evening. Pleased to see Kofi Kingston get the IC belt too, knowing it won't hurt Jericho and will give him a real good start to his run on Raw. Especially since that frees up Jericho for what I suspect will be coming next ... a run at ...

CM Punk, New World Heavyweight Champion
On Raw the night after NOC, Punk challenged Edge for his title, and Mr. Money in the Bank upset the former 2-time Mr. MITB for the belt, bringing some World Championship gold back to Raw. On the one hand, I like that they've corrected the belt problem. On the other, with Kofi Kingston as IC champ and CM Punk now as world champ on Raw, you have a very young, very talented but still somewhat green crew heading up WWE's flagship program. While we have been rallying for some glass ceiling breakage and up-shakeage for awhile, I'm wondering if this might be a bit too much too soon. We'll need to see how vets in or near the title pictures - Chris Jericho, John Cena, Shawn Michaels, Randy Orton upon his return - work with the youngsters to make Raw the hipper, edgier brand it should be.

Edge-Vicki Guerrero Wedding OFF!
Stop the kayfabe presses! I never figured these two would get 'married' - WWE has only once gone through with an actual fake marriage onscreen which they pursued past the wedding day, and THAT resulted in a new McSon-In-Law and two McGrandchildren in real life, so I knew they'd break up the lovey-dovey Smackdown twosome in some manner. So in that sense this is 'not news'. However, I expected them to try something interesting by way of having Vicki turn on Edge - who has the rep of being a player but thus far had been completely kindhearted and doting to Vicki. So this was good and makes sense, but I can't help but feel like it is something of a lost opportunity for down the road, having him dump her so quickly, and in a heelish way. Just my thoughts though.

Anyways - thanks for bearing with my absence. I will be back folks, tomorrow night (or Tuesday a.m.) with my Raw thoughts. :) Glad to be back, and better than ever. Take care and hope everyone had great Canada Day and July 4th long weekends in my absence. Cheers all!