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411’s Instant Analysis 12.20.10: Monday Night Raw

December 20, 2010 | Posted by Ryan Byers

WILLKOMMEN!

Welcome kids to a little fun we’re going to have here at 411. The Instant Analysis column is the companion piece to 411 Live Pay-Per-View Coverage and features immediate reaction to wrestling pay-per-views. The focus in Instant Analysis is on first thoughts and initial reactions instead of play-by-play, with the goal of providing you with instant access to writers’ thoughts on the show. We have decided to give these a try for some of the TV shows, so lets see how things work out . . .

SEGMENT ONE
A MIZ-MAS CAROL
Analysis: Miz comes out to cut what at first appears to be a generic “I’m the heel and I just retained my title at the pay per view promo,” but it quickly turns into something else. He is first interrupted by spooky music (which sounds an awful lot like whale song) which brings out Alex Riley referring to himself as the Ghost of Christmas Past, though the outfit he’s wearing actually makes him look more like Jacob Marley as far as A Christmas Carol characters go. Riley sets up a clip from the Lawler title defense a couple of weeks back, Miz gloats some more, and Michael Cole is out as the Ghost of Christmas Present to discuss the title defense against Randy Orton. He’s wearing fake chains just like Riley was . . . have the writers not actually read Dickens? It’s Marley who wore the chains as punishment for his misdeeds during life. Anyway, the Ghost of Christmas Future is a still picture of Kaylee the Miz Girl put up on the ‘Tron with the Conan O’ Brien superimposed mouth treatment. Eventually John Morrison interrupts and makes fun of the segment. He’s the last guy who needs to be knocking others’ promos. A fight breaks out between Morrison and Riley, with Jerry Lawler also getting in a shot. Sheamus runs out for the heel save, but the GM dings in and books a six man tag match for later tonight with Miz, Riley, & Sheamus taking on Orton, Morrison, & Lawler. I wouldn’t call this an all-time great segment, but I will give them credit for trying to do something different with the standard fifteen minute show-opening promo and I liked the fact that we were treated to a fresher punch of players in the main even title picture instead of the seemingly endless Cena/Orton/Edge/Show/Jericho mix that we’ve gotten for the last couple of years.
Rating: 8.0

SEGMENT TWO
MELINA PEREZ vs. EVE TORRES vs. ALICIA FOX in a THREE-WAY #1 CONTENDERS MATCH FOR THE WOMEN’S TITLE
Match Result: Perez pins Fox.
Match Length: Two-ish minutes.
Match Analysis: Nattie Neidhart is out for guest commentary, and she actually doesn’t do that badly. She’s not the Rock, but she’s talking about her matches like they’re actual sporting events, which I miss wrestlers and announcers doing. As for the match, it was really just a collection of spots, including Fox turning a Melina headscissors attempt into a big ole’ powerbomb. The finish saw Torres and Fox team up on Perez for a variation on the Doomsday Device, only to have Melina catch Alicia off guard with a forward victory roll for the three count and a title shot against Nattie. After the bell, Melina pastes Neidhart across the face with a big slap off of an attempted handshake from the champion. I was afraid of this match when I saw the participants announced and the fact that it’s a three-way, as I figured they would try spots that were too complex and risk hurting each other. However, things were kept so short and things were executed with an uncharacteristic level of competence, so it wasn’t nearly as cringe-worthy as I expected.
Rating: 6.0

SEGMENT THREE
DANIEL BRYAN DANIELSON w/ THE BELLA TWINS vs. WILLIAM REGAL
Match Result: Danielson via submission.
Match Length: Five or so minutes.
Match Analysis: Aaaand the internet just had an orgasm. If you put a gun to my head, I could not have told you which WWE roster Regal was assigned to prior to his coming out for this match. Aside from the fact that it was relatively short, this was completely different than any match you’ll see on WWE TV these days. They spent the majority of it on the mat, first with some pretty-faced paced counters that almost looked like something out of BattlArts and then with Regal getting the heat with an old school chinlock. Immediately before and immediately after the chinlock were strikes from both wrestlers, first kicks and then European uppercuts. The guys were LAYING IT IN too, hitting each other a lot harder than you’ll usually see on Raw. I was getting flashbacks to the old Benoit/Regal matches on Nitro where they had bets going in on who could make the other one bleed hardway first. The finish saw Regal looking for the Regal Stretch, Daniel blocking it, Regal attempting a butterfly suplex, and Daniel blocking before maneuvering his foe into the LaBell Lock for the clean submission. Again, the relatively short length kept it from being anything spectacular, but it stuck out, got over, and was memorable just because it was a different style. The sad thing is that, if they wanted to, WWE could put on a Raw with eight different matches with eight different styles so that they would all stand out, but, for whatever reason, they prefer to make ninety percent of the roster wrestle identically to each other.
Rating: 8.5

SEGMENT FOUR
SANTINO MARELLA & TAMINA vs. TED DIBIASE, JR. & MARYSE OULETT
Match Result: Tamina pins Oulett.
Match Length: Just about two minutes.
Match Analysis: I guess Santino & Tamina’s on again/off again relationship is on again this week. Santino and DiBiase did some basic stuff early with Marella getting the edge until he set up for the Cobra, at which point Maryse tagged in. The French Canadian redirected the strike into Marella’s own face, but that didn’t stop Tamina from tagging in, superkicking Maryse, and pinning her with a superfly splash. There was some ugly stuff in here, as Tamina’s superkick missed by a country mile and so did a dropkick that DiBiase threw early on. However, I’ll still take Tamina as Marella’s tag team partner over Kozlov as Marella’s tag team partner any day of the week.
Rating: 5.0

SEGMENT FIVE
WILL THE REAL JOHN CENA PLEASE STAND UP?
Analysis: Johnny boy is out to celebrate his victory over Wade Barrett and his savage beating of Nexus, where he did just about everything short of loading them up in a box and slapping a “To: FCW” label on it. He notes that the stable is not on the show tonight for the first time in six months. He replays the culmination of his bout with Barrett several times and throws his hat into the ring for the Royal Rumble, but, of all people, Vickie Guerrero & Dolph Ziggler interrupt. There’s an extended sequence where the crowd drowns Guerrero out with boos and “You Suck” chants every time she attempts to start her promo, not even stopping when Cena seemed to be legitimately attempting to calm them down. The jeers got so bad at one point that, when Vickie pressed on despite the boos, Cena had to recap the highlights of her speech for her so that the audience would understand them. Now that’s heat. For some reason they replay footage of Jerry Lawler insulting Guerrero from the Slammy Awards last week, which sets up the King and Cena trading fat jokes. After a verrrrry long segment, Michael Cole’s ding goes off and we’ve got a Cena/Ziggler match for after the commercial break. This reads like something I should have hated, because it went on and on for some time with no real point that couldn’t have been accomplished in a third of the time. However, I DIDN’T hate it. In fact, I enjoyed it a good deal, in part because all three of the featured acts (Cena, Guerrero, and Lawler) are all ridiculously charismatic and good enough performers to take something like an unexpectedly great crowd reaction and work with it on the fly. This really felt like one of those live, improvised television moments that you can’t capture on a strictly scripted show, and it was obvious that the performers were feeding off of the audience and having just as much fun as they were. It didn’t really lead anywhere or accomplish anything for the long term, but it was damned entertaining while it lasted.
Rating: 8.0

SEGMENT SIX
DOLPH ZIGGLER w/ VICKIE GUERRERO vs. JOHN CENA
Match Result: Cena via pinfall.
Match Length: THIRTEEN MINUTES.
Match Analysis: Ziggler got the heat as soon as the bell rang, which felt odd because usually you’d like Cena shine for a little while first. Cena almost turned a chinlock into an FU at around the five minute mark in order to tease his comeback, but Ziggler took over again as the announcers threw to another commercial break. Cena was in fact coming back on the return, avoiding a dropkick and a sleeper in between his four moves of doom. Ziggler actually tapped while the referee was distracted by Vickie, causing Cena to break his hold. Dolph used the distraction to hit a version of the Rocker Dropper for a hot nearfall. A belt shot missed seconds later, and that set up the FU for the Cena win. Then, after the bell, CM Punk hit the ring with a chair, wacked Cena with a couple of shots, and walked off. As far as the match itself was concerned, we missed a fair amount of it due to the commercial break in the middle, but, from what we did see, it appeared to be a fairly average match helped out tremendously by the fact that it got ten more minutes of bell-to-bell time than the average Raw match these days and even more by the fact that it was taking place in front of an AWESOME live crowd. I’m not as far onto the Ziggler bandwagon as some, but he’s a good hand and Cena has his act down to a t. As far as the post-match angle is concerned, I’m interested in seeing a Punk/Cena feud because the mic work (if not the matches) should be off the charts, but it struck me as a bit odd that all Punk did was give him a couple of moderately painful-looking chairshots that Cena sold as a mild annoyance as opposed to a brutal attack. Hopefully there is some sort of explanation for why things went down that way in a later interview.
Rating: 7.0

SEGMENT SEVEN
MIKE the MIZ, ALEX the RILEY, & SHEAMUS vs. RANDY ORTON, JOHN MORRISON, & JERRY LAWLER
Match Result: Lawler pins Miz.
Match Length: Fifteen minutes, almost on the nose.
Match Analysis: The good guys ran wild early with the first real heat being Sheamus on Jerry Lawler. Lawler was able to make a mini-comeback for a mini-hot tag to John Morrison. Morrison got a few licks in before Sheamus landed a shot to his knee, which the announcers put over as having been injured in the prior night’s ladder match. At that point the real heat sequence began, with Morrison playing the role of Ricky Morton but with better abs. At one point, a “You are awful!” chant directed toward the Miz broke out. When the audience starts making up their own chants for you which haven’t really been put over on television first, you know you’re over. There were a couple of good near-misses while Morrison was attempting to tag out to his partners, which he finally got when Jerry Lawler was smart enough to provide a distraction to set up an enzuguiri by Morrison which allowed him to tag in Orton. Randy busted out the Olympic Slam for the second week in a row, so I guess that’s just part of his repertoire now. The finish was an interesting one, as all of the wrestlers were hitting big moves on one another, including an RKO to Alex Riley followed by the Miz attempting the Stroke on Jerry Lawler. Orton broke it up, however, giving another RKO to the Miz and allowing the King to scootch over and grab the pin. This match was sort of like Greg Valentine – it took ten minutes to really get going. When it did get going, it was competently wrestled but not really spectacular. I do have some questions about the booking, as you basically made your number one contender (Morrison) look like the weakest link on his team, having to be bailed out by a sixty year old man in order to get the job done. However, they do have some time to rehab him before the Royal Rumble, so it might not be that bad after all. The pin by Lawler was also an interesting choice, as I’m not sure whether it’s meant to give the audience a feeling of closure after the King lost his title shot a few weeks back or whether WWE wants to do another match between the two after the original got over so well with this being the means through which they get there. Oh, and after the match the GM booked an Orton/Miz rematch for tomorrow night’s Smackdown.
Rating: 7.5

FINAL THOUGHTS

Segment of the Night: Bryan Danielson vs. William Regal

Trash Segment of the Night: Marella & Tamina vs. DiBiase & Oullet

Final Analysis: After a boring show that nearly drove me to drink last week, Raw rebounded in a big way seven days later. It’s clear that the company wants to hold off for a few weeks before really starting the hard sell for the Royal Rumble, so there wasn’t much build up to the big show here, though they did start to effectively plant seeds for various rivalries, including the Miz/Morrison match and something brewing between CM Punk and John Cena. (Though, given Punk’s reported timetable for return, that might be more for Wrestlemania than it is for the Rumble.) Perhaps the real highlight of the show was the fact that, instead of interview segments and backstage skits that are over-produced and over-written, the majority of the wrestlers’ storytelling was done in the ring tonight, with Cena/Ziggler and the six man tag team match doing a good job of advancing company storylines with nothing more than in-ring action and with Danielson/Regal being an entertaining yet brief stand-alone bout. We need a lot more shows like this one and a lot fewer shows than the pointless Slammys.

Verdict: 8.0

411 RATINGS SCALE:
0 – 0.9: Torture
1 – 1.9: Extremely Horrendous
2 – 2.9: Very Bad
3 – 3.9: Bad
4 – 4.9: Poor
5 – 5.9: Not So Good
6 – 6.9: Average
7 – 7.9: Good
8 – 8.9: Very Good
9 – 9.9: Amazing
10: Virtually Perfect