Quick Monday Night Raw Review:

Just got done watching a pretty good Monday Night Raw. The WWE has been doing very well leading up to WrestleMania — they go right back to basics. It’s odd how just creating competition (for a title or the Money in the Bank match) is a great way to create good wrestling matches.

The conflict within Rated RKO was interesting, but you knew that Edge was going to win once you saw the combatants in the Last Chance (Raw Only) Battle Royale. The battle royale match itself was quite good and Edge showed himself to be a very entertaining heel when he won. The match almost definitely cemented the Ric Flair versus Carlito showdown for ‘Mania as well.

The Jeff Hardy vs. Randy Orton match was also a fun preview of the Money in the Bank match. The DQ finish was a nice way of keeping both competitors strong and Hardy’s over the ladder legdrop was quite the sight.

I like the WrestleMania Reversal Matches. Granted, we only had one this episode, but it’s still a great concept.

The HBK-JBL (that’s a lot of initials) encounter was good for what it was — a device to get audio for the spectacular video package that will air right before Raw’s Main Event of HBK vs. Cena.

The Benoit-Cena match was very good and told a story as well. While I was hoping for a DQ finish or something other than Benoit losing cleanly, the ending was well booked with Cena using a take-down to get Benoit in position for the STFU.

The Battle of the Billionaire angle was pretty predictable, but was nonetheless entertaining. Vince’s yelling that he was symbolically shaving the heads of those who booed him was odd and showed that he was a bit demented and strange leading up to the WrestleMania match.

Also, it looks like the end of the Masterlock Challenge. I didn’t think that Masters was going to be successful against another brand’s champion (even if that brand is ECW). Lashley was believable as the first person to break out of Masters’ challenge (although my wife did ask why didn’t anyone just kick their way out – either by kicking low or stomping on Masters’ foot).

Melina’s angle with Ashley was served well via Candice Michelle. Melina’s a bit like the mean popular girl in high school — at least in the way she acts.

Overall, a pretty good show. Great ending with the announcement of the No Way Out rematch of Cena-HBK vs. Batista & Undertaker. Conflicts a plenty in that match.

2006: Reviewing the Year of Wrestling: Part 1.

There are plenty of other articles looking over the past year in wrestling. I’ll be writing a couple of articles about the past year. I’ll look at the year in terms of WWE, TNA, their main event scenes, their undercard, tag team situation and miscellaneous. This will be a multi-part posting considering how long this post could be.

WWE Main Event Scene:

Raw’s WWE Championship scene brought in new main eventers this year. Only three men held the WWE Championship this year: John Cena, Edge, and Rob Van Dam.

Edge has now solidified himself as a believable main event-caliber wrestler. He had some fantastic matches with Cena, but the one match that stands out to me is Edge’s title defense against Ric Flair in a ladder match on Raw. The match was excellent with dangerous spots and showed how badly Edge wanted to keep his WWE Championship. Actually, every WWE Championship match Edge performed in showed how badly Edge wanted to be champion. From good promos to excellent matches, Edge should remain a main eventer (assuming Triple H doesn’t crush him in singles competition).

Rob Van Dam looked to be the new/old face of WWECW. WWE took a chance by having the WWE Championship given to the high flyer at an ECW PPV. WWE’s biggest championship belt rested on the shoulder of RVD. RVD then blew his spot by getting caught on drugs. The ECW and WWE championships were taken from RVD quickly and it looks as though Van Dam will never be a champion again. I expect RVD to go to TNA as soon as his contract is over.

John Cena is the champ and has been quite established as the top face of WWE. I think his ring skills have improved and he does what he can with scripted promos. Raw is stacked with other main event level talent such as HBK, Triple H, Randy Orton, Ric Flair (when necessary), Umaga and Hacksaw Jim Duggan. Okay, I’m kidding about Duggan – just seeing if you were paying attention.

SmackDown!’s World Heavyweight Championship scene was chaotic. Batista vacated his title, Raw’s Kurt Angle filled in as champion (after HBK refused to go over to SmackDown! according to articles online), Rey Mysterio was terribly booked as champion only to lose to the revitalized King Booker. King Booker kept the title with excellent promos, created a stable of wrestlers, but lost the championship to Batista in November. The best thing for the division this year was King Booker. His size and ability allowed him to feud with wrestlers of all sizes and his personality made the fans root for the babyface. Hopefully, he’s solidified himself as a true main eventer after numerous false starts (such as the WrestleMania XIX debacle against Triple H).

SmackDown! needs to position some more main eventers for its championship scene. Finlay’s feud with Batista, involvement in King Booker’s court and his excellent ring work make him a candidate for rising to the main event. Chris Benoit is a main eventer and does not need the U.S. title. Mr. Kennedy has positioned himself at the upper mid-card/lower main event after his excellent feud with Undertaker. If need be, Kane can become a champion with the right push. Mysterio and Undertaker can float around in whatever scene they would like although Taker has more control over his own destiny.

Next Time: I’ll cover either TNA’s main event scene or WWE’s undercard.

WWE Raw: The Go Home Edition

Survivor Series is around the corner full of traditional elimination matches. It’s got the old school wrestling fan in me interested. The opening promo on Raw with all the teams meeting and showing that they are actually teams.

I quite liked the Royal Rumble reference by Shawn Michaels and was hoping that the resolution to all the wrestlers in the ring would be a Raw Royal Rumble similar to the SmackDown! Royal Rumble and the PPV. Just have all the wrestlers involved in one giant match. It’s a bit risky, but could have been a good 10PM main event.

VKM and his lovefest for DX? No scowl or anger for DX when announcing that DX will be in a match tonight? I guess all is forgiven since Vince gets to keep so much of the t-shirt sales. (Why not mention that every time DX shills for DX that they are effectively creating a revenue stream for Vince?)

Sabu vs. Umaga – quite the unusual match up.
Sabu with a good match and can easily withstand the loss. I still don’t think of Umaga as a main eventer, but some one has to be. Quite the grill on Umaga – maybe Cryme Tyme can still his teeth.

Masters vs. Lawler + Torrie Wilson
Wow, who writes Masters’ dialog? Carlito the rescue. Their old feud may return. Penis jokes? Par for the course. So Carlito is helping Torrie out of the ring and misses the Titantron image of Masters coming up from behind him. Lawler to the rescue? This is getting odd. What next? Will Todd Grisham save John Cena? Maybe.

Backstage segments:
Nitro and Melina + Grisham – bleh.
Kenny’s the break out star and he can actually talk. Ron “I was the first black WCW Champion, remember?” Simmons and Flair. Interesting.

IC Ladder Match – Why do they explain the rules? It’s not like a TNA Reverse Battle Royal/Tournament + Hot Dog Eating Contest no mustard allowed match.

Excellent spot with Nitro’s standing drop kick to Hardy on the top of the ladder. It’s one of the crazier ladder spots in recent memory (aside from Shelton Benjamin and his MITB match). After hearing some of the commentary on this match, I think Lawler and JR could be replaced with their video game counterparts and no one would know – just create a soundboard with their voices.

Jeff Hardy wins round three. I think this match proved a toughness to Nitro that I didn’t think he had in him. These two didn’t phone it in – very impressive ladder match. That could have been a main event match – maybe these guys will eventually be in that scene.

Dusty Rhodes vs. Spirit Squad Guy
Dusty heals faster than Wolverine out there. His leg was attacked the entire match, yet he can do his dance. Sorry, Spirit Squad guy.

Backstage: Rated RKO, Maria, and Cryme Tyme.
I’m not sure what the hell happened to the writing, but so far, it’s a good show. It looks like this week the WWE acknowleged the WWE Tag championships and the division. A future storyline with Rated RKO as champs with the face challengers Cryme Tyme? Nah.

Lita could have just had her rant without the blindfold match. So she’s leaving. The division gets smaller and smaller by the day. Considering there’s hardly a division, maybe Lita will just take the title with her.

Captains vs. Captains match.
The faces go over (terrible idea) on the tv show and it ends with an all out brawl. maybe there shouldn’t have been a clean finish and just the brawl.

Decent show overall.

Raw: Sept. 4th Edition

Tonight’s Raw had that “Raw before the PPV” feel.

The show opened with the WWE Champion, Edge, doing an excellent heel promo with a snazzy trailer video to put himself over. The segment was interrupted by John Cena who caught Edge (who jumped off a ladder) then FU’ed Edge through a table. Good promo, good segment, great intensity.

Jeff Hardy and his “Watching Paint Dry” Segment was quite good. It’s a bit of a stretch to set up a joke, but it was alright. The Hardy/Nitro match was way better than I expected. I think Hardy did an admirable job carrying Nitro. Nitro also unveiled some new moves like a standing moonsault and a nifty backbreaker-neckbreaker combo. I fully expect Jeff Hardy to win the IC championship at Unforgiven, btw.

There was some tag team stuff and the continuation of the DX/McMahons + Big Show storyline. I didn’t care for much of the DX stuff, but at least there was a tag team match with tag team moves being used.

The shock of the night was seeing a former SmackDown! Cruiserweight and ECW alum go over the WWE homegrown. I’m talking about the Super Crazy vs. Chris Masters match. It was a decent match and Super Crazy showed everyone the prettiest moonsault in the business.

It looks like Trish is going to go out as champion at Unforgiven – that’s the right thing to do. Additionally, that will bring uncertainty to the championship picture. Could there be a women’s championship tournament maybe open to all WWE divas (including SmackDown!)?

The main event for next week’s Raw is Vince vs. Triple H. I don’t know if that will push buyrates up or not. I thought Vince was shooting when he said he wanted to main event at MSG and now he will. Let’s hope that it will be the last time the 61 year old does this.

A six person tag match? Once again, seems like a device to use right before the PPV. It looks like Carlito is getting some passion out of Randy Orton. Orton is back to a more aggressive style (like when he was challenging for the IC championship a while back). Edge does a fantastic job selling for Carlito and just about anyone he is in the ring with. Here’s hoping he wins at Unforgiven so he’ll be an unsufferable bastard for weeks to come.

Did anyone else find it interesting to see Cena and Orton wrestle? Those two are supposed to be the future of the business (even though Cena is the present) and will probably end up headlining a WrestleMania one day.

Orton gets the win by RKO’ing Trish. The finish was a good way of protecting everyone.

All in all, a pretty good show. Surprisingly solid.

Nitro and Melina: The Greatest Promo Ever?

Last Monday night on Raw, the world witnessed an event of epic proportions. That event was the Johnny Nitro and Melina press conference promo.

The promo reminded me of that infamous Jackie Gayda & Chris Nowinski vs. Bradshaw & Trish Stratus. Watching both, I felt a sense of amazement. I could not believe my senses. I was truly witnessing history. This could be the worst promo I have ever seen in my years of watching professional wrestling.

At first, I was intrigued with the idea of a press conference segment. Hey, that’s new – maybe WWE Creative saw that podium sitting in the truck and thought, “Hey! Let’s mix the paparazzi with the podium. It’s a (dramatic pause) press (pause) conference! Yes!”

Then Nitro started talking. I couldn’t tell if what he was saying was scripted or not. I hope to all that is good that the promo was not scripted. Perhaps the WWE sent young Johnny out there with some bullet points. He rambled on without direction for a while. I sat there confused. What exactly was the point of this promo?

Then Melina got on the mic. Melina can talk – she just sounds like a snotty cheerleader. Then it happened. Nitro sucked the promo-power right from Melina. Melina was also without direction, babbling, rambling, stumbling, bumbling, and other words.

The announcers even were questioning the promo – but not in that storyline kind of “What is going on here?” – way. JR wondered aloud. What was the point of this “press conference?”

Eventually, the promo was over and the world continued. Since even JR was trashing the thing, maybe the WWE will actually figure out some things from the greatest promo ever.

Promo-time is a good thing. It gives the wrestlers time to create a character. Promos by people who need practice are best left for the studio or house shows (hey, the wrestlers practice matches there. Why let them try out material on the road?). Studio promos benefit from editing magic. And if a guy can’t really talk – do one of two things. Approach One: Get them an old-school manager. Johnny can’t talk? Set him up with Armando. Approach Two: nWo editing. The nWo promos were cutting edge with weird camera angles, etc. Just cut together a bunch of clips of scripted lines as a single promo (maybe a voice over of training or action clips) and the wrestler gets over without looking like a fool.

The NM press conference could have been a nice little video segment. Here’s how I would re-tool it. They could take questions from the press or fans – fake e-mails or something. Hell, if the WWE is smart, they could spin this into some kind of rambling podcast or video segment that airs on WWE.com, iTunes and Raw.

Truly, this was the greatest promo ever. And by great, I don’t mean good – great also means: “being such in an extreme or notable degree.” Thanks, dictionary.com.

SummerSlam 2006 Thoughts

Now I had said I didn’t want to pay for SummerSlam 2006 because the card didn’t seem too great. But then I got caught up in the SummerSlam hype. I actually attended the first SummerSlam with the MegaPowers vs. the Megabucks – so I’m a SummerSlam fan.

They got me to pay up the 40 bucks and I watched the show. Here’s my opinion on it: It was a decent show that was quite fun and set up storylines for a while. Did anyone else notice that every match (except the DX one) had the loser enter the ring first?

The night opened up with Rey vs. Chavo because no other match could open. I enjoyed the match and the two have very good chemistry. Chavo selling of Rey’s offense is believable and the two did not disappoint. I think their No Way Out match was better and no Vicki Guerrero interference would be nice, but all in all a good opener with some nice highspots.

Hogan/Orton was what I expected except for the finish of Hogan going over. It’s not like he needs to protect his spot so I don’t understand why he didn’t job to Orton. Hogan played the crowd excellently and he’s the smartest man in wrestling – I wonder how he would do as a booker (assuming he was no longer an on-air talent).

Show vs. Sabu was alright. I was surprised there was no interference by Paul Heyman or RVD or someone. The two didn’t work together that well and the match was sloppy in parts.

The I Quit match was more hardcore than the ECW match. Some crazy bumps had me cringing for both wrestlers. The match ended abruptly with Mick quitting to save Melina and quite possibly means that the feud will continue.

DX vs. The McMahons (+10): I enjoyed seeing Ken Kennedy getting such offense on DX. It would be nice to see a Kennedy vs. HBK feud since the two can be loudmouths very well. Since Kennedy is such a star on SmackDown! it’s only a matter of time before he is sent to Raw. Anyway, the match portion was weak, but I enjoyed seeing the McMahons using tag-team finishers from the past. I was disappointed they did not use the Midnight Express’ finisher. It also set up a Kane-Umaga feud to give both men direction.

King Bookah vs. Batista: Batista needs some conditioning work since he nearly botched the Batista Bomb. Bookah retains and the feud will continue. That’s good for SmackDown!

Edge vs. John Cena: Cena loses in front of his home crowd so Edge will do the job at Unforgiven in Toronto. I’m glad Edge successfully defended the WWE championship at such a major PPV. It was a good match and I still think that Edge is a great champion. He seems like he could lose any match to any opponent (take a look at his ladder match against Ric Flair or his recent match against Carlito). He draws good heel heat and fans want to see him get his butt kicked in the ring.

BTW: I also liked the interaction between the champions. It makes the two shows really seem like two different promotions.

Last Week’s WWE Supershow

Last week, I attended the WWE Supershow in East Rutherford, New Jersey. For those of you who don’t know, a WWE Supershow is where the WWE records both SmackDown! and Raw at the same event. SmackDown! is taped first and then is followed by the live episode of Monday Night Raw. Telltale signs of the Supershow include black ring ropes and the Raw polygon-shaped Titantron.

The show started with a dark match featuring the return of Bob “Hardcore” Holly. The fans were supportive of Holly’s return to the ring.

SmackDown! followed the dark match and the fans were pretty much sitting on their hands until Ken Kennedy and Batista had their match. The crowd did not care for SmackDown! as evidenced by a sign I saw, “I only came here for Raw.” The Chavo/Rey segment did not get as much heat as it should have. Two people in front of me tried to start an “Eddie’s Dead” chant. I found that quite distasteful and disrespectful of the late, great Eddie Guerrero.

King Booker and Undertaker had a quality match that the fans appreciated. However, the crowd was hot for Raw even though the episode of Raw was really no better than SmackDown!

The WWE Red and Blue brands shouldn’t be competing, all the WWE should see is green.

It just shows the sad state of the WWE. WWE constantly puts over Raw as the “flagship of the WWE” and puts down SmackDown! At least JBL tries to put over SmackDown! as the “A Show.” The fans have bought into the WWE thinking that SmackDown! is the B show and not worth watching. For a short time, SmackDown! was the real A show with Kurt Angle, Edge, Rey Mysterio, Los Guerreros, John Cena, Randy Orton, Big Show and Brock Lesnar.

Every time SmackDown! has some momentum, the WWE undercuts it. Take a look at that list – who is left? Rey Mysterio and Chavo Guerrero are left. Triple H took Edge and brought back Orton to Raw. Show and Angle are anchoring the WWECW with star power.

SmackDown! is usually saved by a Raw wrestler coming over to the show. When Batista vacated the World Heavyweight Championship, Raw’s Kurt Angle managed to win the SmackDown! championship. Shortly thereafter, HBK got a pinfall victory over Angle on Monday Night Raw (while Angle was the SmackDown! Champion) to further show the fans that Raw is superior to SmackDown!

I cannot understand why the WWE would bother to do this considering any WWE brand brings the WWE money. For some reason, WWE is choosing to bury one show at their own expense. WWE could be making money on all of their brands, but chooses to do so with Raw and the new ECW. SmackDown! has quickly become the third brand.

So if anyone from the WWE is reading this, build up SmackDown and ECW to be equal to Raw and just make some serious money. When the brands are built up, fights between SmackDown! and Raw during the big-money PPVs would generate buyrates. The perfect example is the interpromotional classic, Raw’s HBK vs. SmackDown!’s Kurt Angle. Two superstars whose interactions were limited by being on separated brands allow for a slow building feud that can take months and their match will make money on a joint-brand PPV.

The WWE Red and Blue brands shouldn’t be competing, all the WWE should see is green.

Quick Raw Thoughts

DX Segment:
I liked seeing HBK mock the Miz when he “forgot” WWEShop.com.

In the Just for Men recap segment: They pretty much showed the entire match between Carlito and Trish vs. Nitro and Melina from SMNE. Grisham? Cruiserweight championship? Will someone please fire him? Strong match between Shelton and Carlito. Shelton loses, but Carlito cheated. Keeps Shelton relatively strong. Although, it would be nice to see Benjamin win a match.

The Cena-Edge Video Package is almost complete for SummerSlam. I didn’t do a review of SNME, but that FU onto the table from the steel steps spot was very cool.

Does anyone else think that Armando Alessandro Estrada sounds a lot like Ric Flair? I really was hoping Umaga would speak eloquently when Maria asked him that question.

The Highlanders win again in a squash match against no-names. Welcome to Wrestling Challenge 2006.

Cena vs. Umaga
Cena’s belly-to-belly suplex is a true belly-to-belly suplex. Very Magnum T.A. Not as graceful, but at least it’s a wrestling move. Cena is getting better in the ring. He’s no Chris Benoit in there, but he is getting better at telling a story. The WWE Champion, Edge, comes to ringside and Cena went to attack him. I am surprised that Cena jobbed to Umaga. Then again, Cena doesn’t need many victories these days. He’s over with or without a championship.

Foley Promo #2
I’m enjoying the Mick “No Rematch” Foley Promos. I am curious to see what it will take to get Foley to change his mind (storyline-wise).

Ric Flair calling out Mick Foley and he’s once again interrupted. This time, it’s Nitro and Melina. So now, Foley hangs with Edge, Lita, Melina and Nitro. If they ever put these guys together on screen, it could be interesting. Maybe Mick could be the other M in a new MNM.

Then there was the DX vs. McMahons part 3,198. I don’t really care for this storyline.

Have fun, kids. Shameless Plug: Listen to the Killing Time podcast for non-wrestling entertainment! KillingTime.TV