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

Swagger won the United States Title this week, which was kind of a meaningless win, seeing that he got it off an injured guy and has already held a (theoretically) more prestigious title, the World Heavyweight Championship. After his serviceable but simplistic match against Zack Ryder, we had to watch the guy compete for a second time against John Cena. That contest turned out to be more about Cena's anger issues than Swagger, but still, why is WWE devoting so much television time to making their new United States Champion (and their old one by extension) look lousy?

Swagger clearly has potential. He's massive and boasts a legit amateur wrestling background - you should be able to make something out of that. But for whatever reason, it's just not clicking, and hasn't been for the past couple years as WWE has struggled to figure out what to do with the guy, continually inserting him into go-nowhere, mid-level feuds that typically end with everyone looking crummy. Couldn't this time be better spent trying to develop another talent? How about Tyson Kidd or any of the other guys Brodus Clay has beat up in the past week?

While I wasn't thrilled with Swagger's involvement in the whole angle, I actually dug what WWE did with John Cena this week. After a couple weeks of attacks and aggressive psychoanalysis from licensed flame-therapist, Kane, Cena finally got pissed off. Furious that his little buddy Ryder had to compete with a generic torso injury, Cena opened up on Swagger, beating the holy hell out of him. A smile spread across my face as I realized that Cena was doing exactly what Kane had urged him to do for weeks: Embrace the Hate.

Of course, WWE couldn't leave well enough alone, and had Kane's big Predator-looking mug pop up on the TitanTron to explain the above in hammer-on-the-head detail. I understand that WWE doesn't want anyone to miss the significance of Cena's actions, but was this really necessary? Couldn't they let it play out over the next week, or maybe just explain it a bit in commentary? I dug the segment and what it means for Cena's character, but I wish WWE would have a little more respect for its audience.

I retain all of my initial reservations about turning a guy like Brodus Clay into what amounts to a comedy face. The dude is a big impressive specimen who can move shockingly well around the ring, and would be a much more useful piece to the company as a monster heel, especially with the relative dearth of good villains currently in the promotion.

That said, I'm becoming a huge Funkasarus fan despite myself. Clay looks like he's having a stonecold blast out there, and doesn't care who knows it. He's even integrating the gimmick into his matches by jiggling and getting all Goldust on his opponent while loudly calling his spots. I don't really understand why he's doing it, and couldn't really catch what he was saying (did he shout "sheeplex"? is that a thing?), but it cracked me up all the same. The Funkasaurus gimmick has a relatively short shelf life, and I have absolutely no idea how you could get him involved in a serious storyline, so the countdown to a SantinoSaurus team-up has already begun. For now though, I'm really enjoying the whole thing and Clay is young and impressive enough to bounce back from a goofy gimmick. Mark Henry used to be Sexual Chocolate after all.

I'm going heavy on "When I was at WWE..." stories this week, and for that, I apologize, but this one bears repeating based on Daniel Bryan's great promo on Raw this week. Back when he first showed up on WWE NXT in 2010, there were plenty of people in the company eager to play up the whole "He's good in the ring, but he's got no charisma!" angle. Our link to the road would come back to the WWE.com offices and talk about how Bryan was "like an accountant" and had nowhere near the charisma of a guy like Miz. That was an OK story, and a reductive, easy-to-understand way to explain Bryan's talent, but there was one small problem: It wasn't true.

Aside from his size, Daniel Bryan is the complete package. The dude is one of the most charismatic guys working in WWE right now, and he's finally getting a chance to show it off with this Big Show and AJ angle. What's most interesting about it is that Bryan's character is actually a nuanced, complicated one with a large degree of ambiguity - something we don't often see in the cut-and-dry world of professional wrestling. Right now it's unclear whether Bryan is moving toward a full-on chickenshit heel run, or trying to garner sympathy over his storyline girlfriend's injury. Either way, he's engaging and captivating and a treat to watch. If you haven't been keeping up with his super-neat matches against Big Show on SmackDown, now's the time to start.