WWE Monday Night Raw 1/16/2012 - The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

I have no problem with someone - anyone really - wanting to honor Martin Luther King, Jr. He was a great man with a lasting legacy that we would all do well to remember. That said, I get serious douche-chills every time WWE dupes themselves into thinking that honoring the man with a one-minute video at the top of an episode of wrestling is in any way tasteful or appropriate.

Frankly, the whole thing reeks of crass, shameless, tacky exploitation - similar to when the company pays homage to the armed forces with the year's hottest jingoistic Nickelback or Kid Rock track. What makes it even worse, however, (aside from the fact that it happened during a Linda McMahon election year) is the way in which wrestling is not only an industry largely built upon xenophobia, racism and bigotry, but that it has yet to fully confront and come to grips with that ugly truth. And adding insult to injury, the only black wrestlers to appear on the show tonight were a dude from Boston that the company used to bill from Jamaica before deciding he was from Ghana, a fat guy with a funk gimmick, the fat guy's jobber, a crazy guy who talks like a character in a racist joke, and Mark Henry, who, incidentally, I'm totally fine with.

Still, it could be worse: As of this writing WWE has yet to put on a "Martin Luther King of the Ring" event, which is a remarkable show of restraint for the company.

After the disappearance of Air Boom from television while Evan Bourne served out his very real suspension for smoking very fake weed and a title change at a house show this past weekend, WWE doesn't seem to be taking its revitalized tag team division as seriously as it once was. Still, Air Boom and Primo & Epico (from here on out referred to as O-Town) managed to put on a decent tag team match with plenty of hippity-hoppy lucha shit to go around. I dug it.

Even though I like Kofi Kingston and Bourne, I'm fine with them losing the titles as they were never really setting the world on fire together, and they're both capable of working as singles competitors (whether WWE will make good use of them is another question, however). I am a little worried about putting the belts on O-Town though,as the last time Primo held the tag titles with one of his relatives (O-Town v1.0), it was a completely forgettable affair. I think O-Town: TNG is a pretty decent team, but they aren't even the most interesting pair of Hispanic villains on SmackDown. That would be Hunico & Camacho, son of Haku, who while not technically Hispanic, is close enough for a fanbase that's fine with a guy named Kingston with an American accent claiming he's from Ghana.

WWE still seems intent on pushing CM Punk and Daniel Bryan as top-level talents (more on that later,) but their partner-in-Internet-fan-favoritedom, Zack Ryder, isn't faring so well these days. After a ton of television time on both Raw and SmackDown, WWE had Ryder win the United States Title only to get injured by Kane last week as part of a largely unrelated storyline, and then turn around and lose the belt to Jack Swagger this week.

It's a crazy way to treat a guy you have so much invested in already. Even if someone decided that Ryder wasn't all that he was cracked up to be (and it still seems early to be making that decision), there had to have been a better way to handle this. As it is now, Swagger has the belt, but he won it from an injured opponent, which does little to make him look like an impressive threat, and the title itself feels like little more than a gaudy accessory passed back and forth between Vickie Guerrero's boys. Also, Ryder's ridiculous injury sell wasn't helping anybody, as he performed pain by repeatedly sucking the saliva out of his mouth.

Sometimes I really question whether WWE has any idea who its audience is. When I worked at WWE.com, we frequently scrambled to garner or just brag about coverage on pop-culture and celebrity gossip television shows, and it always came off as desperate to me. WWE is huge - it's a television and live event institution with millions of fans. By courting every Access Hollywood host or mid-level star desperate to promote a lousy movie, WWE does nothing but ghettoize itself.

It's in that spirit that some maniac at WWE signed off on having Perez Hilton show up on Monday Night Raw. The crowd's reaction spoke volumes, as they immediately started booing the celebrity blogger. At first, I thought that maybe this wouldn't be so bad, as they could easily have the little guy come out and play the heel. Instead, WWE quickly segued into the only thing worse than a Perez Hilton promo: A Kelly Kelly wrestling match. Eventually, the audience came around on Hilton after he pulled a Bella out of the ring by her feet, becoming one of the few men to ever turn face by attacking a woman.