- 30,184
- 1,991
- Joined
- Oct 15, 2000
Last week was quite an eventful week of Raw, and for the most part, a good show other than the final segment. There are definitely things I would change about the booking, but for the most part, WWE is doing a good job of building towards WrestleMania. A few months back, I really didn't think I would have much interest in this year's Mania, but now, I'm actually getting pretty excited for April's show. Considering it is pretty much the standard roster with the exception of HHH returning and The Rock being on the show (but NOT wrestling), it's a pretty remarkable feat by WWE. We had a pretty good idea of the card before last week's show, but now the matches are set in stone.
Last week Raw opened with John Cena coming out to address The Rock's epic promo from the week before. Cena started with his typical goofy comedy before deciding to bring back his Thug Life. Cena cut a very non-PG promo where he referenced The Rock polishing his balls and blowing him. We'll see if it was just a one night thing, or if Cena will actually start to transition back to a more edgy character. My guess is it was more of a one night thing and Cena will be back to his goofy smile and annoying promos. We'll see. It will also be very interesting to see if they build harder towards a Cena and Rock confrontation with a match that isn't going to happen at WrestleMania rather than Cena's actual match for the WWE Championship against The Miz.
The Rock will address Cena on tonight's show. The key word is address. The Rock will not be live at tonight's show. It will be a "via satellite" segment. With The Rock, we know it will still be great, but not being in front of the live crowd always takes away from the promo. WWE fans need to become accustomed to this since The Rock will not be appearing live on Raw other than maybe one more time before WrestleMania.
The original thought for The Rock and Cena program was that The Rock would align with Cena at Mania and hopefully give him the rub to be seen as a real top tier star. Now, that really doesn't seem like a logical end point to me. They are really having The Rock and Cena go hard back and forth at each other. The finish for Mania to me would be Cena of course beating The Miz for the title, and then having a stare down with The Rock. No wrestling. No physical contract. Just an eye to eye stare down between WWE's biggest star today against arguably their biggest star of all time.
IF The Rock does agree to have a match against Cena, and that is still a giant if at this point, there are rumors they may make the match at Summerslam to build off of the Los Angeles tie in. Yes, that will guarantee you a huge buyrate for Summerslam, but I think WrestleMania is the only place a Rock/Cena match should happen. Normally, I would say WWE could never hold off a match for a whole year, but if The Rock only appears very sparingly on WWE TV over 2011, it could definitely work.
The 2 21 11 promos culminated last week with The Undertaker returning to Raw. He received a good pop, but it wasn't overwhelming. I think fans have seen it just too many times. Plus, he had some horribly designed Taker logo hanging above the ring. Anyway, as Taker was slowly plodding around the ring, HHH's music hit which was the real surprise return of the night. HHH came out to a huge pop which shows that despite how much many of us online may hate him, he's still a huge star to the normal WWE fan. That scares me because HHH's plans were to wind down his career, but after hearing the pop he got last week, he very well may return to bury young talent for another five years.
HHH and The Undertaker had a stare down in the ring. Both men then looked to the WrestleMania XXVII banner above the ring. I'm so tired of guys looking up to the WrestleMania logo. They do it every single year and have already done it multiple times this year. Anyway, The Undertaker looked back at HHH and smirked and laughed at him and began to leave the ring. The Undertaker was actually booed as he was leaving. Taker then turned around, got in HHH's face and gave him the throat slash. HHH responded with a DX crotch chop. The crowd went nuts for this. Not a word was spoken during the entire segment. I've read a lot of mixed feedback on this. Personally, I wasn't crazy about it, but some people really loved it. For me, if this segment went done four weeks ago, I think it would have been great. But as of last week, we were six weeks from Mania, and now we're only five. We still don't know why they're actually facing each other. If they do go with the rumored Streak vs Career stipulation, there is no possible way to make me care about it in just five weeks. Plus, will Shawn Michaels fit into the match? There just isn't enough time to put this match together as it properly should. HHH needs to cut a very strong promo tonight to get this match over, and The Undertaker should really be there. You can't have The Undertaker respond on Smackdown because only half of Raw's audience watches Smackdown.
CM Punk beat John Morrison in a nothing match with both men selling injuries from the Elimination Chamber the night before. After the match, CM Punk called out Randall Keith Orton. He told him The Nexus were not there tonight. He then said Randy Orton didn't deserve to wrestle him at Mania. Punk said that he would injure Orton so badly before Mania that Orton would either not be able to compete, or he would just not want to face Punk. Orton came through the crowd and attacked Punk. Punk bailed and even though he said Nexus wasn't there, Nexus did save Punk in the aisle. Punk's promo was great. If I were booking, Punk try to have one member of Nexus beat Orton each week. Orton would beat and take out each one, until it finally came to Punk vs Orton at Mania. Yes, it would make the rest of Nexus look like geeks, but they already are geeks, so who cares. The other problem is, WWE is not ready to job out Mason Ryan yet despite his terribleness and lack of potential.
Michael Cole interviewed Jerry Lawler about losing his WWE Championship match to The Miz the night before at Elimination Chamber. It started slow, but then Cole asked Lawler how it felt to lay on his back in the middle of the ring while the ref counted three with his dead mother having the best view in the house. The crowd and Lawler were ready to kill Cole at this point. Cole reminded Lawler that if he touched him, he would be fired. Lawler said he may not have gotten his WrestleMania match by winning the WWE Title, but he would make his own moment by challenging Michael Cole. Cole said "No way, NEVER! NEVER you senile old man!" Cole continued to refuse the match as he walked back to the announce table. Lawler followed him there. Cole threw his drink in Lawler's face and proceeded to run away through the crowd. Josh Matthews said, "Cole is running away like a coward, like a girl" which was a hilarious line. Cole and Lawler were both tremendous here. However, I question having Cole and Lawler in an actual match. I would have had Lawler vs Alex Riley with the stipulation that if Lawler wins, either JR comes back or Lawler gets five minutes with Cole. Regardless of the match itself, the build has been and will continue to be tremendous.
Other quick notes from Raw were Mark Henry quickly squashing King Sheamus (which happened directly after HHH's return... that was not a coincidence). Jack Swagger may have been champion, but he never had the backing that Sheamus had, which makes his fall that much more remarkable. The Bellas beat Eve and Gail. And Kofi Kingston tried to attack Alberto Del Rio, but after Ricardo Rodriguez made the save, Del Rio laid Kingston out.
The closing segment on Raw was stupid, illogical, and only served to further bury members of The Corre and the Tag Team Titles. For what seems like the 10th straight year, they had the WrestleMania main event opponents, The Miz and Cena, team together to face the tag team champions, Corre members Justin Gabriel and Heath Slater. The Miz single handedly won the tag titles pinning Heath Slater with the Skull Crushing Finale. This was a complete squash match. So The Miz and John Cena were now the tag team champions. Wade Barrett got on the mic and said The Corre were requesting their rematch right now. The anonymous GM allowed this. Slater and Gabriel had a much more competitive match this time around. However, they were still about to job once again as Cena had one of them up on his shoulders to hit the Attitude Adjustment. However, The Miz ran in and hit the Skull Crushing Finale on Cena allowing The Corre to make the cover on Cena, get the win, and win back the tag team belts. This closing segment made no sense. It was stupid, buried guess and the titles, and it was a really flat finish to an otherwise pretty good edition of Raw. I know how WWE will likely spin it though. The Miz will say he won the tag titles by himself, and then he took out Cena, and Cena lost the match and the titles. Whatever. I just hope the next five weeks of build for Cena and Miz is much better than last week. But like I said above, it will be very difficult to not be overshadowed by The Rock and Cena program.
