WWE Monday Night Raw 1/9/2012 - The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

After what felt like years of build-up, WWE has finally redebuted Brodus Clay, not as the Fall of Humanity-delivering monster heel they had teased for so long, but as something far scarier: A fat dude jiggling around to wacky music in a revealing outfit. Apparently skipping directly to the big-fat-love-machine portion of his career that most over-sized black wrestlers have to suffer through, Clay is now the Funkasaurus, hailing, naturally, from the Planet Funk, and I remain somewhat embarrassed by how much the whole thing delights me.

Still, while it was fun watching his ridiculous opening dance routine (which was replayed more than anything that happened in his actual match against Curt "Why Zack and Not Me?" Hawkins), and it definitely got a chuckle out of me, I have to wonder about the wisdom of the whole thing. Sure, a guy his size and look can get turned into a monster heel at the drop of a hat (see: Mark Henry, Kane, etc.), but think of all the time WWE wasted pushing the guy's return. Now that they got the cheap pop and laughs for Dancing Brodus Clay, what do they do with him next? Hopefully the answer is to put a dance belt on the man.

And this week's winner of the Shitterson Match of the Night is...WWE Champion CM Punk vs. Jack Swagger! I didn't have high hopes going into this match for a few reasons. First, Swagger is more than a little problematic. While he's had neat matches in the past against guys like Christian and John Cena, those are two of the best wrestlers in the industry, and could probably carry me to a decent match. Also, Swagger is a hell of a lot larger than Punk, which I worried might limit his moveset during the contest.

All of that concern was misplaced, however, as the two put on a solid, compelling match, with Punk even accomplishing what a never-ending series of beatings from Sheamus couldn't: He made Swagger look good. He didn't look as good as Punk, of course, but he still looked like a credible competitor, courtesy of some solid storytelling-based wrestling that played to Swagger's considerable strengths, without giving him time or space to go into the robotic mode that so many of his matches fall into. The match was so good that the wacky, inexplicable ref botch at the end didn't even bug me.

Finally, it bears mentioning that Punk has gotten into really phenomenal shape in recent months - much more cut up and muscular than we've seen him in years.

 

Last week I was a little worried about R-Truth's face run. While I'd still prefer he remain more of a tweener character (what was the last proper tweener in WWE anyway?), R-Truth showed us this week that he's perfectly capable of turning face while keeping all the craziness intact. He no longer seems like a guy you'd find on the subway at 3am on a Tuesday, but R-Truth is still hitting the Little Jimmy thing hard and even soliciting "WHAT" chants from the crowd. Losing the wacky "I'm hunting wabbits"-style backstage segments from last week was a great move, and I'm proud to say that I'm back to being an R-Truther (it's definitely a thing now - go ahead and start saying it to your friends, family and religious leaders).

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little nervous going into Jericho's appearance on Monday Night Raw this week. You guys read it, Facebooked the hell out of it and left phenomenal, smart, insightful comments on the first ever edition of "Straight Shoot": Straight Shoot: Chris Jericho Is A New Type Of Heel last week, but the whole Jericho-centric article could have been invalidated by Jericho turning into a full-on face this week. Thankfully that wasn't the case.

While it wasn't anywhere near as mind-numbingly long as last week's post-modern wrestling genius, Jericho once again stormed the arena, solicited cheers and then left without doing much of anything. As an added bonus, however, he started crying in the ring. Whatever Jericho is doing, he's clearly got a plan and it's clearly bananas. No, it's better than bananas - it's plantains. Jericho's new gimmick is plantains, ladies and gentlemen. Deal with it.