Raw Thoughts

So Raw this week was OK - and my experience of it was a lesson in not looking at spoilers. Three major onscreen returns, some decent action, some good comic relief and a decent build up to Unforgiven ... and yet I found it all kind of 'blah' and 'weak' as the show was pretaped and I have known the results since Sunday night. So I will try to discuss it objectively, knowing it was strong - hopefully my lack of enthusiasm doesn't distract from that.

Let's start with my two favourite parts, which were strong. I enjoyed Santino Marella's "Honky-meter" as he measures the days of his IC Title reign against the record set by longest-running Intercontinental Champion Honky Tonk Man. Funny stuff. I also enjoyed Charlie Haas' entrance as John Cena - after his turn as "Charlito" last week, this kid might have a future in impersonations if WWE keeps him around. Also in the plus column, though not a favourite, Jamie Noble's win over William Regal finally. He's a skilled little wrestler and this story with him, Regal and Leyla is fun to watch - even if it is filler, it's entertaining filler.

In the mixed bag department, I liked Randy Orton's onscreen (non-wrestling) return and enjoyed his work as a heel critiquing the status of Raw, and particularly its champions - while he was gone, as a way of reinforcing his arrogant heel-ness. However WWE has to watch this lest he be too much the 'heel with too much of a point'. Especially as it pertains to CM Punk, who's been allowed to cleanly beat all of one challenger thus far and in desperate need of credibility.

I also found the Chris Jericho-Shawn Michaels promo at the end entertaining, as they tend to be (even if this feud is a bit long and promo-heavy, it is strong and they bring the interest level up a notch just as it gets draggy). But a damper was put on tonight's performance by the fact that Shawn Michaels got injured at the end of the show, which stinks for both WWE and his fans, and I'm sure Michaels himself, who has a feud he can really sink his teeth into with Jericho.

I personally don't know what to root for in terms of this feud, and their Unforgiven match in particular, going forward. On one hand, his match with Chris Jericho was something I was looking forward to; on the other hand I hate someone to make the stupid decision of wrestling injured. On the third hand, if Shawn IS injured, the match might not be as great as it otherwise might be anyway - it might be relegated to only 'very good'. On the fourth hand, the authenticity and 'unsanctioned' nature of the match could easily lend itself to gimmicks (weapons, blood, Jericho himself) protecting Michaels and sending him off on an injury 'angle' if he needs it. This played well into the match, adds a touch of realism to it, and all that - it's just a very unfortunate and accidental way to do so, and put a damper on the whole Raw thing for me from the beginning, knowing it was going to happen. I wish my old favourite a speedy recovery.

On the weak side - the pretaped nature of Raw did more than just give me the opportunity to seek out online spoilers. Probably Raw's biggest minus last night was, that due to it being pretaped, there were some editing possibilites which WWE did take advantage of, and a few of the edited spots were sloppily obvious (the women's match ending for one, which was apparently botched about six times live before a useable finish was employed).

And while they did an OK job of hyping the PPV - Rey's return, the contract signing, etc., I guess it was good, but again, knowing what all was going to happen beforehand, took away the big event and climaxing feel that a go-home Raw, to me, should have - and on a Raw where three former world champions (Randy Orton, Rey Mysterio, and Candace Michelle) returned to TV, that definitely tells me Raw is more exciting live. Hopefully WWE keeps that in mind as much as possible ... which they do ... and thank God taped Raws are so very rare.