(I apologise if we’re a bit shitty this week, been doing University work all day and I’m a bit burnt out. Hopefully it’ll be still entertaining)
There’s some giant news coming out of this week’s Raw that I will of course get to later.
We opened this week’s episode with John Cena, who briefly mentions The Rock. He claims that their match at Wrestlemania will be for the WWE title. Talk about unnecessary. Two of the biggest marquee names in the history of the industry and you want the title in there as well? I hope to the wrestling gods (JBL or Ric Flair, depending on who you believe) that the title isn’t online. That would put the entire spotlight on that match; leave some for someone else will you, please? Every man on the roster apparently wants a title shot, and they’re all deserving… but then it happens. It washes over you like a bad smell… no, its not Big Shows tighty whities, it is infact R-Truth’s entrance theme. Five man gauntlet match for the number one contendership, fair enough. More on that later.
WWE shows an excellent vignette for Awesome Kong, flicking the head off a plastic Barbie doll. Tremendous. It shows us that Kong is a force to be reckoned with and that she is an alternative to the current stick thin divas division. Awesome Kong was praised with reinventing women’s wrestling when she was with TNA…. But being TNA they of course screwed it up. I just hope that Kong is used right in WWE as someone who can kick ass and take names all the while NOT being ridiculed for her body image. WWE have two women on the roster who are muscular and CAN wrestle, Natalya and Beth Pheonix. How they rose and fell. Don’t make the same mistakes with Kong, WWE.
Almost as if by coincidence we get a divas match following this. Eve has been champion multiple times, yet, the crowd doesn’t care. In fact, the crowd doesn’t give a steaming turd. I’d go as far as saying WWE has pushed Eve as the face of the Diva’s division and she gets absolutely no reaction. I hate to say it but she’s got to be fucking someone, surely. Is the world prepared for a Bella Twin as Diva’s champ? I know I certainly aren’t, purely because of the horror that’s about to come our way.
This move just absolutely screams ‘transitional champion’ to me. Kong is going to debut soon enough and just absolutely squash Brie Bella. Wait a minute. Did WWE remove the belt from Eve so she wasn’t the one to get squashed? If so, that’s implying Eve – frickin – Torres has some sort of untarnishable legacy? Definitely fucking someone.
I was anticipating Sin Cara’s on air debut to see if WWE have forced him to adapt his style to fit their product. First things first, I saw Primo and instantly thought ‘Job match.’ What we got however, was a lengthy match where Primo got in a lot of offence… perhaps too much. Sin Cara should have got some exciting and dazzling offence in and that should have been it. Over. To make matters worse, Primo slipped on the ropes causing Sin Cara to fall to the arena floor just as he was about to pop off his finishing move. With Vince McMahon allegedly furious about his botched entrance for his on air debut, I’ve already seen people claiming that he’ll never make it big in WWE. Sin Cara doesn’t speak fluent English, he wasn’t sent to train in FCW and has been involved with two clear botches already. I think he should have been sent for some training in FCW for a few months before his debut. WWE is completely different to any other organisation in the world, particularly Mexico. Take all your other accomplishments and throw them out of the window. When you’re in the biggest company in the world, you can’t afford to make mistakes. Do I think that Sin Cara is a future main eventer? Yes, but not for a long time yet. He will be an ideal replacement for Rey Mysterio when the master of the 619 retires, which can’t be too far away now.
Daniel Bryan… How can you not feel for the guy? As I’ve said in previous columns, when given the chance, he’s put on match of the night and match of the year contenders. We get Daniel Bryan chants in arenas across the US when he was fired. Bryan got a nice main event rub on his return at Summerslam, he won the United States title and he was over with the crowd… things were looking good for the American Dragon. Then suddenly, we see him less and less on Raw and he starts competing on Superstars, he gets a ridiculous ladies man gimmick and then abruptly loses the title to Sheamus. The US title match could have been a show stealing match at Wrestlemania but it gets bumped off the card AND NOW…. He’s losing along with Santino, Evan Bourne and Mark Henry in a group called ‘Apple.’ How did WWE manage to drop the ball on this one? Are we seeing the old ‘smaller guys will never be main eventers’ attitude that Vince McMahon mythically has seemed to adopt? Anyway, The Corre win… everyone proceeds to not care.
Michael Cole, who I find ever entertaining, was a bit too much in the following segment. Surely, after years of broadcasting and being in the wrestling industry he can ad lib better than just screaming the same thing over and over again. JR telling the referee to shut up was probably the highlight of what was a weak ass segment. King won with one pathetic looking roll up to continue this war of announcers.
Jack Swagger is another example of the mighty falling. As World Heavyweight Champion he slowly proved himself week by week and became a nice fresh addition to the main event scene. This match made Swagger look terrible, a far cry from his ‘All American’ persona. Moreover, Cole slaps Swagger across the face following the match and we get absolutely no reaction from Swagger. If this is how he is going to be treated they may as well fire him along with Daniel Bryan and Evan Bourne in the upcoming spring clean.
Thank you, Edge. For everything you’ve give us throughout the years. From the innovative tag team matches you gave us with Christian all the way to the Rated R Superstar you gave us from 2005 onwards. I’ve never been the biggest fan of Edge, but I’ve never disliked him either. His character has become stale the past year and he most certainly works better as a heel, but he has worked hard the past 14 years to gather an impressive Hall of Fame career. As soon as WWE announced the speculative ‘Edge career over?’ segment early in the episode I immediately thought WORK, this is an angle 100%. For all I know he could be legitimately injured. However, this ‘retirement announcement’ was sprung on us rather abruptly. He made his announcement on Monday Night Raw rather than his home of Smackdown and WWE was hyping ‘the fall out from Edge’s retirement speech’ for the upcoming episode of Smackdown. Furthermore, elements of the speech just reeked of a work to me. It wouldn’t be a stretch of the imagination to see tears streaming down his face; if he truly is giving up the thing he LOVES to do… not to mention having to give up not of his own accord. If this is a work, there’s going to be some pissed off fans. Almost everyone in the wrestling world be it from WWE, TNA or anywhere else have taken the time to express their condolences for Edge and congratulate him on his career. I’m just not sold on it completely as yet. As far as his title is concerned, he is surrendering it on Smackdown… I 98% guarantee it will be Christian vs Del Rio at Extreme Rules. Edge said it best when he stated that some people think WWE is all ‘smoke and mirrors’ and that it doesn’t hurt…and that they’re wrong. It echoes Mick Foleys sentiment in his book ‘ Have a Nice Day: A Tale of Blood and Sweatsocks’ - “Lying in a hospital bed in Munich, Germany-seeing my ear being thrown into a garbage can-not being able to take it on the trip back because I didn’t know the German word for formaldehyde. And having a nurse walk into my room, looking at the piece of my body that’s lying at the bottom of the garbage, and saying, ‘Es ist alles schauspiel,’ which means ‘It’s all a big joke!’…So if they show that much respect for other patients, what made me any different? Because I was a wrestler. And professional wrestling will never be respected, no matter how many teeth I lose, no matter how many ears I lose, no matter how many brain cells have to die.” We’ve got to appreciate what these human beings we see on our TV each week do to their bodies in order to entertain us, night in, night out. Edge won’t be gone from WWE for good, I see him either in a backstage role or sort of sticking around, much like HBK has.
For the main event we got the return of The Nexus, they better be used right from here on out. What else did we get? A whole lot of nothing really. I suppose the big news is that R-Truth somehow made it into the main event of a pay per view. Truth did absolutely nothing on the lead up to Wrestlemania and didn’t even get a spot on the card. Who in the blue hell thought he deserved a title shot at Extreme Rules? Wouldn’t it be better to build someone up before putting them in the main event of a pay per view for the top title in the business? Fuck.
I’m returning with a blog on Thursday… just an idea I have.
Thanks for reading. Sorry it was a bit shit this week, I promise I’ll make up for it on Thursday!
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