Positively Raw 05.31.11: A True Conspiracy

For those of you returning: Welcome Back, and for those of you joining us for the very first time: Welcome to Positively Raw!

Wrestling Matters

With the rebranding of a certain wrestling promotion in recent weeks, there’s been a lot of debate as to why wrestling matters. The simple answer is: Entertainment. Wrestling entertains us; it’s why we tune in to the shows every week; buy the DVDs and t-shirts; and even why we read these very web pages. Wrestling presents a larger than life atmosphere that you can’t find anywhere else, and like a drug, it has us hooked – but in a good way.

Of course TNA’s rebranding to Impact Wrestling is being seen by many as an attempt to strike out against the WWE, which as of a couple of months back no longer stands for World Wrestling Entertainment. Instead the WWE is just the WWE, and much of the internet exploded into uproar about how Vince McMahon is trying to abandon his bread-n-butter by removing wrestling from his product. After all, WWE talent are largely referred to as Superstars and Divas, and the word wrestling itself appears to be used sparingly on Raw and Smackdown. In my opinion though, it’s not so much that Vince wants to rid his company that started out as a wrestling company of the w-word, and I don’t buy into any of the nonsense that states that Wrestlemania will be rebranded and renamed. The reason for the change from World Wrestling Entertainment to just WWE seems to be more for the fact that the company has been branching out into other ventures, including movie making. The reason for the rebranding therefore is more to do with the fact that their other pursuits are nothing to do with wrestling. It’s not like we don’t get multiple wrestling shows still every week from the WWE – and wrestling is the focal point of those shows as it always has been. The dreaded W-Word still crops up too, with Kharma using the word aplenty on Raw just this week. So don’t sound the alarms and don’t press the panic button, ‘cause WWE’s gonna be about the wrestling for a long, long time! With all that said, I do still admire TNA, or Impact, or whatever we’re calling them’s current strategy, and I’ve found their last few shows to be very entertaining also.

Another point to ponder is what exactly is wrestling, as every week I see complaint after complaint from wrestling fans over match quality. I find match quality hard to determine personally, as we all have different tastes. One man’s Kurt Angle vs. Shawn Michaels is another man’s Kane vs. The Undertaker. I personally always enjoy it when CM Punk and Rey Mysterio tangle, but if every match were to be like that, then wrestling would become pretty boring. I like the variety, and that’s what wrestling is about. We can have an epic encounter between two technical high-flyers followed by a collision of two giants. Some fans will prefer the first option, others will prefer the second. Those that may not like the high-flying combatants will then mast likely enjoy the heavyweight bout even more by comparison. It’s win/win. Hell, one match that I particularly enjoyed from last week was from WWE Superstars, which is still shown on TV here in the UK (I still don’t understand why Superstars and NXT are still on TV here when we don’t get Tough Enough). The match was between Santino Marella and Zack Ryder, and as you can imagine wasn’t your usual contest, but still in my eyes reached its goal of entertaining.

Some of you may have laughed at some of that match and enjoyed it for what it was. I know that others of you would have hated it. But that’s half the fun of watching wrestling.

Wrestling is Entertainment

1. A-Ry 3:16

Last week on Raw The Miz fired his assistant Alex Riley, and after slapping his former employee in the face, was met with a vicious beating from Riley. This week, Michael Cole being the journalist that he is wanted to get an apology out of Riley in a bid to see his favourite pair not separated and to make his buddy The Miz feel better. Cole showed us the clip from last week and informed us that for some reason the Raw GM had hired Riley to a new Raw contract (I guess overriding the Smackdown draft pick). Riley then came down to the ring, walking to his very own, brand-spanking new entrance music. Cole began to interrogate Riley, asking questions such as ‘How could you attack The Miz after all that he did for you?’ and ‘How do you think this makes The Miz feel?’. Riley shrugged off the questioning at first and Cole told him that Miz saw Riley as a brother. When asked how he himself felt, Riley spoke up and told Cole that he’d never felt better, to which Cole responded by telling him that he’s best beg for forgiveness from The Miz for his actions. Riley then started to lose his cool with the Voice of the WWE and when Michael Cole called Riley a bastard, the gloves were off. Riley shoved Cole down to the delight of the crowd and was about to put a beating on Sir Michael before The Miz attacked from behind. The Miz was extracting his revenge for Riley’s action last week until Riley managed to fight back and once again lay into his former boss. Riley threw Miz around the ringside area, even putting his own body on the line by tackling Miz over the guard rail in impressive fashion before The Miz hightailed it, living to fight another day.

The Positive – The face turn of Alex Riley appears to be full swing, and that swing appears to be going smoothly. I was concerned that they’d just give Alex Riley some generic entrance music for the first few weeks until they could come up with something better, but Jim Johnston and crew have already put together a unique and recognisable piece for Riley to enter an arena to. In my opinion it suits his character well. The crowd’s reaction to Riley was also a huge positive, as he received a pretty impressive pop upon his arrival, and the cheers only got louder as he got physical with Michael Cole and got the upper-hand on The Miz once again. I think that this has the potential to be one of the hottest feuds of the year, as both men aren’t afraid of getting really rough and can put on a good brawl. We’ve seen how well The Miz can brawl around the arena before, and now we’re seeing that Riley is just as rough and tough. As for the storyline itself, it reminds me almost of Austin/McMahon (I realise some of you are going to call blasphemy on me for this), as it’s that same tried and true formula of a man snapping at his boss and doing what we’d all love to do. McMahon was and is the boss of WWE, and Austin stood up to the tyrant back in the Attitude days. This is on a smaller scale of course, but Miz was still Riley’s boss until last week, and now Riley gets to beat the crap out of him. All they need to do now is re-establish Riley’s finisher, give it a memorable name and we’re good to go…

2. Wrestling matters HERE

On Raw this week Dolph Ziggler took on United States Champion Kofi Kingston in a non-title match. The seeds for this budding rivalry were somewhat sewn last week as Ziggler was seen scouting Kofi’s match backstage. The two men had a terrific back-and-forth match that ended with Ziggler countering Kofi’s SOS manoeuvre by holding onto the ropes and scoring with the Zig-Zag – pinning the US Champ clean.

Meanwhile an old rivalry was revisited this week as CM Punk took on Rey Mysterio (a match that I was excited for from the top of the programme when it was announced). Mason Ryan was in Punk’s corner, and got involved behind the referee’s back on numerous occasions on behalf of his leader. It was one of these distractions from Ryan that would ultimately cost Rey the victory in what was an extremely competitive match, Punk getting the win after not the GTS, but rather the kick to the back of the head that he used to help Otunga and McGillicutty win the tag-titles from Big Show last week.

The Positive – We wanted wrestling, and we got wrestling on Raw this week. Both of these matches were tremendous and I’d recommend looking them up if you missed the show this week. Both of these matches pitted men that have been rivals before against each other, and both contests were fast-paced affairs in which both men could outsmart each other again and again. Ziggler’s win over Kofi puts him in line for a title shot down the line against Kingston which means that not only does Ziggler get a chance at regaining some gold, but also that we get to see another match between these two. It is also great to see Ziggler go back to the blond hair that made him famous, giving him back his unique look.

As for Rey vs. Punk, these two know how to excite a crowd and they did just that. There were so many counters, near fall, roll-ups and high-flying moves that it was hard to keep up. Mason Ryan’s presence at ringside continued the Nexus storyline well, and Punk’s win gave him and Nexus a little more momentum in their rebuilding. The major story here though was in the way that the match ended, particularly in Punk’s finishing move. CM Punk attempted the GTS a coupled of times throughout the match, but couldn’t hit it and in fact, we rarely ever get to see the move in any match. It seems therefore that we may be seeing Punk shift to a finisher that he can hit easier and quicker on any opponent: The kick to the back of the head. This move has been a part of Punk’s arsenal for years, and is one of his signature moves as opposed to a finisher. When he won his second World title from Jeff Hardy we saw him use this kick before using the GTS, and it is even featured as his signature move in the Smackdown vs. Raw videogames. With the GTS rarely being hit as it takes a bit of setting up, and the fact that it’s hard to lift bigger men up to nail it, Punk looks to be establishing his patented kick as his new finisher. Watch this space.

3. The Conspiracy Continues

Raw kicked off with some technical difficulties this week, as there was no sound and the picture kept cutting out while R-Truth appeared to be mocking John Cena merchandise up in the arena concourse before heading down through the crowd (as he used to do during his What’s Up? entrance) and mocking many Little Jimmys on his way. John Cena then emerged and once again proclaimed that he was more than happy to face Truth in a match, and to re-arrange his crazy face. The Raw GM chimed in and made it official for the main event of the evening.

Before the match began, we see Truth backstage talking to the giant image of himself printed across the side of one of WWE’s production trucks, while WWE Champion John Cena says hello to WWE Internet Champion Zack Ryder who looked to be filming the ending for this week’s episode of Z! True Long Island Story – Woo Woo Woo! I know it! We then got to see Truth’s opening segment with the audio intact, as he was barking his crazy rants over John Cena merch!

Match time, and R-Truth bailed every time Cena went to hit a move. On the outside of the ring, Truth yelled in the faces of fans and took a breather before heading back in. Cena managed to hit his 5-knuckle shuffle, but Truth managed to escape the AA by again bailing to the outside. Truth then approached a father an son in the audience that he had berated earlier and again has a shout at them for being Cena fans. Cena jumped the barrcide having had enough of Truth’s antics and began to bring Truth back to the ring. Truth however, managed to knock Cena back down as he was making his way back over to the ring, and Truth managed to slide back into the ring in time to make the count, beating the WWE Champion via countout. Truth’s night wasn’t finished though, as he returned to Little Jimmy and Big Jimmy, stealing Little Jimmy’s drink inside a John Cena cup and throwing it over Big Jimmy. The show then ended with Cena helping an embarrassed father clear himself up after the assault from Truth.

The Positive – Chris Jericho recently stated on Twitter that we’d see big things coming from R-Truth, and it looks as if he’s going to be proved right. The real technical difficulties that hindered the opening of the show were turned loosely into a part of it with the commentators mentioning that maybe R-Truth was sabotaging the show, or perhaps this was part of the conspiracy that Truth was talking about, as someone was trying to stop him from being heard. While Cena and Truth never actually had a proper match, this was a great way to further the storyline with Truth living up to his new heel character well by taking breathers, and by intimidating the crowd. I particularly liked the way in which Truth spent the majority of the time outside the ring, only to trick Cena into getting counted out. This means that Truth holds a victory over the Champ without them having given the match away for free on TV, meaning that when the two undoubtedly meet for the title on PPV, that it will be a first time deal, with Truth having essentially earned his spot. As for the post-match shenanigans involving the father and son, that further develops Truth as a heel who has truly lost the plot, completing his act of turning on the fans.

That’s all for another week, and I feel that this was another better episode of Raw. One other point of note is that Kharma gave a very real promo about how she is in reality pregnant, and will be back next year. I think that it is a massive positive in the way that the WWE has handled this, as it seems that they are keeping their faith in Kharma and supporting her in her pregnancy, thus doing the right thing.

Until next week #StayPositive