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Wrestling’s 4R’s Friday Edition 9.17.10: Raw and NXT Reviewed!
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By: Jeremy Thomas
Raw 09.13.10:
QUICK RESULTS:
Daniel def The Miz Alex Riley [* ½]
Edge def. Evan Bourne in a Body Slam Challenge [½*]
Mark Henry def. Edge in a Body Slam Challenge [DUD]
Sheamus def. John Morrison in a Falls Count Anywhere Match [***]
Chris Jericho def. The Hart Dynasty in a Steel Cage Handicap Match [** ¼]
Randy Orton def. John Cena in a Tables Match [**]
MIZ APPEARS ON THE OCHO: After our little Raw Roulette opening, Chad Ochocinco came out as the guest host. Now, it’s time for true and embarrassing confessions; I’m a Bengals fan. Ochocinco is not someone I’ve ever been big on as a person though; he rubs me the wrong way, I guess. Besides, we all know there’s only one true Ocho…
Anyway, Chad came out and was pretty iffy on the mic as he started; he talked about how it was going to be exciting in a tone as if he’d taken about three dozen Valiums. But he didn’t talk long before the Miz came out, causing Cole to have a gleegasm and Lawler to groan. Miz was pretty nice on the mic here as he trashed Ocho for not being a champion and drew pretty vicious heat from the crowd. Chad talked up the Bengals, which worked because it let Miz trash the Bengals and the city even more. But before he could finish his catchphrase… “YOU’VE GOT MAIL!” Michael Cole said it was time to determine Miz’s match, and that match was a submission match against… “YOU’VE GOT MAIL!” Ocho got to make the call of the opponent, and of course it was Daniel Bryan. This was a decent opening segment; Chad was far from great but he did what he needed to in order to let Miz garner heat like a black cat on the fourth of July. It’s not a top-notch Right, but it is a Right nonetheless.
SHEAMUS vs. JOHN MORRISON: Backstage, Sheamus showed up to get in Ocho’s face, and he found out that John Morrison had a chance to take Chris Jericho’s spot in the Six-Pack Challenge by beating Sheamus. We learned the match would be Falls Count Anywhere and Sheamus went off on a fun but fairly generic little rant at Ocho. Nothing spectacular, but solid enough. Then for some reason, this was followed-up on with a segment between Edge, Zack Ryder and Sheamus where Sheamus talked tough and Zack acted like a goof. It wasn’t bad, just a bit unnecessary. And finally we got Morrison’s Parkour regimen. That was kinda neat, at least.
Once they got down to the match, things picked up. I thought that Morrison and Sheamus made for a pretty good matchup here than allowed Morrison to look pretty good in a losing effort against the WWE Champion. They actually utilized the Falls Count Anywhere stipulation to pretty good effect and while the travelling around the arena made the match a bit longer than it needed to be, they came up with some solid, innovative spots that nicely used the ringside area. Sheamus won thanks to Chris Jericho, which plays into last week and was a smart move by Jericho to keep his spot available. Good stuff all around and this was definitely the highlight of the night.
JERICHO TAKES A STAND BY SITTING: After he cost John Morrison his match against Sheamus, Jericho came down to the ring and sat down until we were back from commercial. Jericho looked none too happy and said he wasn’t going anywhere until he got what he wanted, which was his spot in the Six-Pack Challenge back. Jericho’s promo was nicely done and it played into that whole Quitting angle (or non-angle). I enjoyed Jericho’s arrogance here about how the ‘E would burn without him, and it took Jericho threatening to expose the GM before… “YOU’VE GOT MAIL!” Jericho screaming at Cole was awesome, as was his calling out the GM pretending to be Vince McMahon. This kept Jericho nicely positioned between face and heel, since he was still being an arrogant jackass but the crowd was cheering him for it. You know…does anyone ever wonder how the GM is able to send such long emails in such a short time? Dude’s got the serious typing skills. Anyway the gist of this was that Jericho was getting a spot in the Six-Pack Challenge, which would be an Elimination Challenge now. But this wasn’t certain; Jericho had to beat the Hart Dynasty in a cage.
We came back to this match joined in progress, and I thought this match didn’t play as badly as it could have. The Harts made a mistake because they didn’t destroy Jericho before they left the cage; that left Tyson in there alone and it was basically a one-on-one match. If the Harts were buried, it was only because DH Smith wasn’t smart enough to slam the cage on Jericho’s head a la Chyna. The match itself came across decently and Tyson and Jericho did some decent work in there together; Jericho picked up the win and moved on. I really don’t get why Jericho left the match and came back into it, but this segment played out fine as a whole.
THE MIZ vs. DANIEL BRYAN: This match was joined in progress from the start, which I’ve never been a huge fan of but they recovered fairly nicely. This was an opportunity to let Bryan have a strong couple of minutes against the Miz, after which Miz faked an injury and had Alex Riley substitute. Riley got a couple attacks in before Bryan got him to tap. This was okay for what it was and was about as good as you could get in a stop-start set of two-minute matches, and it also let both Miz and Bryan have moments where they looked good. Bryan going over strong makes me think he may not win at NOC and I wouldn’t be shocked if that were the case, nor would I be hideously disappointed at this stage. We’ll see where it goes from here.
EDGE vs. EVAN BOURNE: Okay, I’ll say it. Body Slam Challenges are really stupid matches. This isn’t Hogan vs. Andre; you might as well have a “Kick to the Midsection” match and trying to book a match around bodyslamming someone never turns out well. This match was no different. Edge and Bourne are entirely capable of having a great match, but not when it’s something like this. This match was exceedingly short; while Bourne got a little nice offence in and they played to the stip well, this was just not what it needed to be. Of course, that might be because we needed time for a second Body Slam Challenge. That led to Edge getting flattened by Mizark to further the Edge vs. GM story and that purpose is nice; I just don’t like how they got there.
SONG & DANCE MATCH: Okay, really? A song and dance match?!? This is just silly. This was Ted and Maryse vs. Truth and Eve, and assumedly was just a way to debut Truth’s new song. Oh, and let Eve dance. Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with Eve dancing and the song didn’t quite make my ears bleed, but did we need to waste all this time on this? I don’t get it. Ted said “this is stupid!” and I agree with him. Ted said he should forfeit but he wasn’t going to, and then asked for a spotlight. Okay, I’ll admit the “My Way” rendition was vaguely funny, but this thing as a whole just came off as stupid. There are better ways to debut a new Truth entrance song, guys. Seriously.
GOLDUST vs. WILLIAM REGAL: No, I’m not rating this match. It wasn’t a match. Instead we gold Goldust in William Regal’s wrestling gear and vice versa, with both wearing the make-up. Regal has to be considered a champ for the way he’s played his humor as of late and he went into this one to give it all he had; the reference to the brass knucks was nice too. But let’s face it, this was a pointless time-waster and little more. I didn’t absolutely hate it, but they could have spent this time better elsewhere.
JOHN CENA vs. RANDY ORTON: Raw kicked off with a shot of the Raw Roulette wheel, which zoomed out to show John Cena and Randy Orton staring at each other. That brought Josh Matthews in, who teased all the matches we could see, including a pillow fight. I would have paid some very good money to see that happen, for the record, just for the sheer hilarity. Eve came in and spun and we ended up with a tables match. Okay, I guess that works, too. I’m not big on table matches, but it does play into Cena’s loss to Sheamus and Cena had a fun time with it. This is apparently the “Season Premiere” of Raw, which always amuses me. This will officially be the Season Premiere of the R’s. I don’t know what that means, but there you have it.
By the time it was main event time, Ocho was in the ring and he was playing ring announcer. And he sounded half-asleep to boot. Yeah, that was pretty damn bad. Thanks for coming, Chad. They started this match slow since they had a good fifteen minutes to wrestle here, and I would love to say it picked up quickly but it didn’t really. Cena and Orton were hobbled by needing to play into the tables stip and so it was punches, kicks, a move and then going to the tables and teasing a fall into them. Lather, rinse, repeat. About halfway through the Nexus came in and Cena and Orton fought everyone off; then Edge and Jericho came down and got involved and got taken out. Finally was Sheamus, who got an AA onto the outside ring. You know, we bitch about TNA overbooking stuff all to hell and I’m going to do the same here. This didn’t do anything for building hype for the Six-Pack Challenge other than to say “Hey, Cena and Orton rule all” and the match was iffy too. Not a strong way to finish their hard sell show.
DID YOU KNOW?: Nope. And, as always, I don’t care. (And no, this doesn’t factor into show ratings.)
You know how I always talk about how the ‘E is good when they’re focused? Yeah, well here they let the “Season Premiere” specialness and Raw Roulette crap get in the way of their focus and the show suffered. Much of the show was middling at best and while we got a good and decent match out of it, Raw suffered as a whole. This was a show they needed to excel with and they just didn’t. Sorry guys, nice try. SHOW RATING: 5.0 |
By: Michael Bauer
NXT 09.14.10:
QUICK RESULTS:
Dolph Ziggler and Kaitlyn defeat Primo and AJ Lee [1/2*]
Jamie defeats Aksana [DUD]
NOTHING.
VIDEO PACKAGES FOR NAOMI AND MAXINE: I didn’t find these to be as good as Jamie’s last week. Naomi seemed to just be kinda bland with her mic skills and despite having a good background, we still don’t know anything about her in ring ability. Maxine at least gave us an idea as to what she brings to a wrestling ring, but it still seemed a little flat. I’m sure they will be fine, but the videos didn’t do much to impress.
DOLPH ZIGGLER AND KAITLYN vs. PRIMO AND AJ AND THE AFTERMATH: The best part of this match was Dolph and Primo in the ring. Simply put, AJ and Kaitlyn didn’t look the greatest in the ring, but they were better than anything else we saw. Dolph dealing with AJ was so done over, but AJ sold it well. But we went back to the guys and they took over the match. My problem is this. This is NXT DIVAS and unless they get a sex change, it should not have the matches dominated by the men. So, Dolph wins the match and Kaitlyn gets all excited to jump into his arms, which Vickie didn’t like. And who could blame her? I mean, what woman would want a younger, much hotter girl jumping into her man’s arms? Likewise, what guy wouldn’t want a hotter, younger girl that we he is currently with jumping into his arms? So backstage, Dolph explains that she was just excited for her first win and he was just celebrating with her. Vickie then warned him never to do it again and says he will lose her and proceeds to shake her body in a way that should never be repeated.
DIVAS OBSTACLE COURSE CHALLENGE (TAKE 2): So I’ll talk about Vickie later. Once we got the actual challenge underway, we saw something that could have been fine. But after Kaitlyn set the pace, the whole challenge went downhill. Aksana was fine, but just slightly too slow. AJ just did the course and made it looks like motions… slow motions. Maxine has no problems, but slipped off the balance beam. Jamie looked like she was dominating and going to win, but she slowed so much on the box that you have to imagine she did it on purpose, like she was told not to win this one. Then came Naomi, who to all rights should have won this. But I don’t know what the refs did, but it was like Jim Joyce was there to call her out when she was safe. I don’t know what she had to do the pushups again, but it looked like crap. So we had the win and then… well… I’ll discuss that later.
JAMIE vs. AKSANA: Wow, this was just awful. The only positive was that it lasted no more than two or three minutes. The bad news was that it lasted that long. Aksana looks like the worst of the ladies, both in the ring and with her mouth. Jamie at least has some talent, but it went to waste in this match. The ending was done fine, but there was nothing memorable or worth thinking about with this match.
VICKIE GUERRERO RUNS THE OBSTACLE COURSE: Ok, so we are about to start and Vickie decides to show the divas how to run the course. This involved stretching for two minutes, to obviously kill time, and then what could be considered a decent attempt by Vickie. Yes, I did say that. Matthews thought we didn’t have enough time, but she actually was impressive. yes, she had some trouble, but what else would you expect from a 50 year old woman? She would have been fine if she didn’t trip over her own two feet and hat started screaming bloody murder for being a klutz. Let’s see how she blames Kaitlyn for this one.
THE DIVA JOKE OFF: Wow… just freaking wow… Let’s see here. The crowd shat all over the whole concept before the ladies started, which always wins points. AJ did a blonde joke, which was a decent attempt. Aksana spoke something in some European language and then said he joke in English and still couldn’t what she said the first time. Has nothing to do with not getting the joke, just not picking up her speech, which is a re-occurring theme with her. Jamie than gets the crowd to say “AJ who?” and “Aksana Who?” before saying “exactly”… yeah. Naomi says her joke so fast that I never picked up on it, which is probably a good thing. Maxine calls the other divas jokes and then picks on AJ, calling her a girl scout who can’t make it in the WWE. He gives her a $20 in her top and AJ responds with a good, old fashioned cat fight. Kaitlyn then goes into a knock-knock joke and AJ tries to start another cat fight. So, we had six divas, no good jokes, and two cat fights. I think the following should sum it up:
Oh, but let us not forget that Michael Cole somehow got a gong at ringside and decided now would be the time to start being a whiny little bitch and bang on the gong like The Sandman hitting some fool in the head with a Singapore cane. He then says that everyone and everything involved with his season except for him and Josh should be gonged. Not that I disagree, but he just shat all over the entire show. I mean, he is supposed to be unbiased and this was anything but. What a load of shit… yet, IT GOT WORSE!
MICHAEL COLE QUITS: Yeah, this gets its own. So forget once, but twice we had to hear him hit the gong like a three year old on drums. He again shits on the show by calling it a joke and saying he is ruining his integrity. Forget the fact he lost that the moment he joined the WWE after calling a war. He then quits the show and storms off. Why is this ridiculous? BECAUSE IT WAS THE BEST PART OF THE DAMN SHOW! And it fucking sucked!
And if you thought last week was bad, let me sum it up like this. If the best thing on a show is Michael Cole quitting the show in a moment of rage, complaining and bitching like a 12 year old girl, then you have a serious problem. SHOW RATING: 0.0 |
…and remember to stay grounded!
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