Last Night's Raw

As promised ... my thoughts ... saving the juiciest details to be parsed over by Ari and myself on In This Very Ring tomorrow night, along with other information pertaining to Smackdown, real-life wrestling news, the upcoming No Mercy, and yes, even a bit of TNA this week!!!

I will say Raw made the effort to be a 'Big Feel' show last night, bringing in Shane McMahon for the 800th episode. Nothing like (a) a long McMahon break from TV and (b) Mike Adamle to make us miss the McFamily. The tension between Shane-O and Mike was great, although if even Shane condescends to Adamle, it begs the question of why he and his sister Stephanie hired the Adamleader in the first place. Perhaps as a puppet GM?

I also liked the referencing of Shane and Kane's history of feuding once or twice over the evening - they must have listened to ITVR last week. ;) Seriously, too often is wrestling history either over-relied upon, or else completely forgotten and I'm overjoyed to see it referenced, without it taking over the show.

Otherwise it was a decent show but nothing I felt to write home about - Santino's fear of Batista and Batista's cool but severe handling of him was awesome stuff, and I was glad to see Evan Bourne got some offense in before Kane squashed him. Chris Jericho was decent, and it was great to see some fire in CM Punk's eyes. Cody Rhodes put on an abysmal performance when I would see a one-on-one with a former world champ as a real brass ring opportunity. I must admit to falling asleep during the final match, but it's because they threw together JBL and Chris Jericho again, vs. Shawn Michaels and Batista, without acknowleding the very recent (not to mention very personal and intense) feuds both makeshift teams had had amongst themselves. After such a step in the right direction acknowledging the ludicrous nature of Kane having a civil, professional conversation with Shane, to book this match without working with the internal conflicts was poor booking.

So a strong show, but not the best ever - 7.0 out of 10 for the show, and some definite trends in the right direction. Again, more logic and consistency and Raw would definitely be rebounding, at least quality-wise, towards where it was at its height. All the ingredients are there - strong and competent young talent along with some intelligent and capable veterans, a good balance of heels and faces, excellent wrestlers AND mic men ... it's just a matter of making it gel in a cohesive way. Come on dudes ... I know you can do it!

And I'm out - tune in tomorrow night between 10pm-midnight Eastern for the next edition of In This Very Ring. Peace all.