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REVIEW
As I begin replaying the 1,000th episode I first noticed the DirecTV show description for Raw.
"The historic 1000th episode of Raw, starring The Rock, DX, Brock Lesnar, & John Cena. "- period, not exclamation point which I thought might have been more appropriate for a show like they have been advertising.
That in a nutshell describes Raw 1000 really well however, including the inclusion of the period in lieu of the exclamation point at the end of the sentence. Of course though if you are a casual fan and not a smarkish asshole the thought of those guys getting all of the spotlight on Raw isn't an issue, it's a reason for the tip of your dick to get hard. So I'm not mad at WWE for that, it probably got them their highest rated Raw in god knows how long. But alas here sits Dolph'sZiggler completely flaccid :thumb:
Now, up to this point you are probably sitting there thinking to yourself 'fuck this, here we go again, D'Z to bury Raw, fuck this guy, I LIEKED RAW!, so f him and his 3.5 inch dick!' :never:
but believe me, I have zero intention of burying Raw and anyone who thinks that is what is going to happen I implore you to continue reading.
So Raw opens with the first of many trips down memory lane. It's a nice video package, but it didn't make me run to the nearest mountain top to praise Raw. It was nice that they gave Eddie a little tribute.
Fittingly, Vince was the first to come out. Fans liked it, and he did his job and got out of the way. No problems there. DX comes out, crowd has a collective boner, and it was nice to see the DX entrance. Promo started out really poorly IMO with Michaels first couple of corny jokes up until they started talking about 'didn't there used to be more of us?'. Nice to see they decided to include the rest, even though it was obvious it would happen and I don't really give a shit about Billy Gunn or X-Pac. Obviously they had to let Road Dogg do his thing on the mic and he was good. Triple H was fine; Billy/HBK part wasn't too bad.
Insert: Sandow. I thought he was a perfect choice once they decided to take the promo down this path, even if it wasn't the way I would have taken the opener. Sandow has quickly developed a nice little fan base and a lot of people were happy to see him. He delivered his lines well and the crowd took his bait. He of course eventually would get beaten down and everyone smiles and high fives.
That's fine, it's a perfectly acceptable opener. It wasn't bad by any means. I enjoyed it and I think everyone did. But it could have been an epic opener so easily and you could have started off Raw like a house on fire. Just send out Lesnar during the opener ffs. Triple H doesn't need to whore himself into an extra 15 minutes of TV time, let's just kick this shit off right.
You have DX do all the same stuff, but instead of Sandown interrupting you send Heyman and Brock. Heyman/DX have a little back and forth as he/Brock slowly pace towards the ring. Brock, without ever getting on the mic, starts screaming more and more audibly in HHH's direction, and HHH back at him until eventually Brock is sliding into the ring and then double legging HHH. Have him bust up HHH like he did Cena with an elbow from guard while DX is trying to get him off. Have Brock destroy X-Pac and Billy Gunn, go back to HHH before HBK eventually gets him off and HHH jumps up to pedigree him.
Then you A.) don't even have to bother with the boring 'will he/won't he' shit, the match is just obvious. These two want to fight each other. B.) Don't have to have another HHH segment and C.) Both HHH and Brock still come off looking great. Brock is a monster who busted up HHH, destroyed two DX members, and only fell after HBK distracted him for HHH. HHH still comes out on top, but not in a 1 on 1 manner like he eventually did.
This began a trend of WWE doing things that weren't bad, but considering the hype and expectations could have & SHOULD have been a lot better.
One thing that didn't fall into the category of not being bad was the bullshit tag team match between Mysterio, Sin Cara, Sheamus & Ziggler, Jericho, Del Rio. What a terrible piece of shit booking idea this was. Not to mention it was like a Jim Ross dick sucking fest than anything.
I'll say this much: as far as random face/face/face/ heel/heel bullshit tag matches, it was decent. But everyone hates these type of matches.
Now clearly, the one saving grace is that they continued the Jericho/Ziggler feud. The obvious glaring flaw here is that as fans of the feud or idea of the feud, which I think a good portion of us are, what shitty build man. We go from a great promo segment between the two last week to one cheap shot by Ziggler in this abortion of a match this week?
It was a missed opportunity. With every eye on your product for that night you should have found a better way to advance this feud. Some Ziggler/Jericho back and forth mic work would have been nice, or anything else really besides just being an 'oh by the way' at the end of this pointless match. But they were cool enough with each other to hang out in their corner all match. :hogan:
Tout. Charlie Sheen. Do I even need to say anything else?
Now, onto something a lot less awful. Layla/AJ. I enjoyed AJ more in this segment than I ever had before. It was great for many reasons, and AJ herself was great. The progression of the segment was perfect as well. The pokes at kayfabe sort of reminded me of classic Russo when he has a filter and isn't allowed to go all out. The Hand was a lmao moment. Overall this shit was win.
What can be said about this next segment that hasn't already been said about Seab's momma? It was old, played out, and leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Fortunately for us the bad taste was just of stale Funkasaurus, but for some poor guy out there the bad taste was finding out he had a son named Seabs with a lady like Seabs' Mom
I'm sure some of you gave a fuck about Dude Love coming out. I did not. Swagger jobbed in 16.2 seconds. I timed it. Then Clay and Love danced. Then Dude Love used Mankind's finisher for some reason. Overall this was one of the worst segments of the night easily. Poor Jack Swagger.
And the the wedding segment rolled along. Slick. I liked that guy. Daniel Bryan comes in as an annoying little prick, but I'm hopeful he left as something much, much better.
Now of course we have 6+ minutes of awful wedding shit. We knew that would happen. Then AJ 'swerves' by saying no. Vince comes out and a few marks think Vince is proposing to AJ. Long story short she dumps DB and becomes GM. Most people have a problem with that, I really don't. She will be fine.
On to infinitely more important things. Daniel Bryan's reaction. The look on his face is what I've wanted for months. If this isn't the start of a more aggressive and angry Bryan, WWE can go fuck themselves.
Insert CM 'Cena' Punk. Just unnecessary. Face Punk RIP you unbearable son of a bitch. Angry Bryan's response was nice, and Rock's music playing caught me off guard, so I was almost marking. Crowd was full blown shitting your pants marking, as you would expect.
Right away I notice Rock is less bulky than before a more slimmed down, but still ripped obviously. That is great, as he looks more like he did as an in ring performer in his prime, so maybe he can work without getting winded now?
He then proceeded to tear Bryan to shreds on the mic while keeping the crowd wayyyy into it and it was a damn good segment. Rock's announcement was fine, though it now seems he may be back before then, but the main thing I loved was Bryan. Enough of the comedy heel stuff, let him be a ruthless pissed off heel.
IC Title match. All this match did was remind us all (as if we'd forgotten) that this belt means absolutely nothing. Christian won it however long ago, had one mini feud with Rhodes, defended it a couple of times on tv, and now loses it to Miz without ever having a proper feud. Why can WWE not put on feuds based around the IC Title? How hard can it be?
So yea, Miz will make a nice IC champ, if there is such a thing. The match itself was pretty clanky, like the two weren't in snyc. It was far from memorable, and this was also one of the few times the crowd was completely dead. Until Miz won of course, then he got a decent face pop lol.
Oh and Miz's beard is dreadful. It looks like something an 8th grader would grow over the summer.
Triple H/Heyman/Steph.. did this really blow anyone away? Heyman making a couple of mentions about HHH's kids and pissing him off? It was all poorly done and a desperate reach of an attempt to try and give a flimsy excuse for Stephanie to come out. Yea, she looked hot and everyone who watches Raw with their dick in hand was happy, but who cares.
Of course Brock comes to brawl, and it's a nice brawl obviously. They aren't ever going to make Brock not look like an animal in a situation like this. He is going stiff on HHH and it's nice to see.
BUT considering how long we've known about this and considering we all but know what will happen at Summerslam this segment just didn't live up to what it should have IMO. For this feud to have been anywhere near worthwhile it needs to be fucking awesome. And this segment wasn't fucking awesome, it was just okay.
The flex-down pose off at the end was hilarious though.
Santino. Hornswoggle. Come on.
Slater. Now, call me crazy, but this segment did absolutely nothing for me. Slater's little promo was fine, but I'm over these legend squash downs. Lita & APA? Random, and sorry to say I never liked Lita and the APA was nice, but nothing to get me off the couch in excitement. All of the previous squashers coming out didn't produce a blimp on my excitement radar either.
Rock/Cena had a nice little backstage interaction. Short, but nice.
Short but nice, sort of like Undertaker's entrance. I'm going to try not to bury this segment, but this shit was dumb. We randomly send Kane out and then out of the goddamn blue Jinger Mahad has a merry group of jobbers as his minions and he is going to have Reks, Hawkins, McIntyire, Hunico and Commacho randomly beat down Kane because.. because God knows why.
...
and Undertaker, who would realign with his kayfabe brother Kane for the 546th time and their 19 millionth feud back in 2010, comes out to stop them. By golly that's just really interesting to me. The only attraction here would be if you just really wanted to see Taker appear because your nips get hard for his entrance fine. But as someone speaking for those who do not, this segment sucked dick and was a waste of time.
Which left us with only the main event. I think I speak for everyone when I say how disappointed I was to see this match starting at the top of the last hour. Completely proves my incoming theory that this show would be a sloppy clusterfuck, but that's neither here nor there.
The match itself was... dull. It's not even me so much who feels that way, but rather the rest of the IWC from what I can tell. I thought it was okay-at-best, but just rushed and pretty generic. Neither guy was very good, and the ref bump spot was corny as fuck.. but seeing Punk's beginning heel or tweener turn, whichever you want to call it, was nice. Him being divided about pinning Cena after Show took him out was good shit.
Rock coming down to beat up Big Show was cool, and then the moment of the night for most people occurs. One thing nobody can accuse WWE of half assing is this heel turn. That's big time to have that moment in this spotlight of the Raw 1000 on Rock. Congrats to CM Punk for consistently being the 1 guy WWE actually does things properly with. Obviously they had about an 8 or 9 month rough patch there with his face character, but last night showed everyone beyond a shadow of a doubt that Punk is and always will be big in WWE's plans. I could actually see him carrying the belt until the Rumble now. If that's a good thing or not we will find out in the coming weeks, but there's no reason to think Punk won't make his heel character enjoyable.
So all in all, it was a mostly enjoyable show. Some weak segments, sure, but mostly an entertaining show.
The problem I think is that most people, including myself, were hoping for something a little more than an entertaining show, and IMO rightfully so. This show obviously had a special feel coming in, even more so than most PPVs, and I just don't think it delivered at that level.
The two main things to me are that Punk's a heel now or tweener or w/e, but he's not a lame ass face anymore. And Bryan is no longer going to be a corny fuckhead and isn't wrapped up in a romance storyline anymore. It will finally be nice to be able to mark for the guy.
There are obvious complaints you could make about the show. No matches were worth a fuck really. We only got two real matches with Miz/Christian and Punk/Cena. There was a lot of useless filler. They could have done a lot of things better, and there was a 'that's it?' feel after the show to me. WWE could have put on a show that left me counting the minutes until Raw next week, and they failed to do so.
::jeritroll:
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