WWE Monday Night Raw 12/12/2011 - The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

This week's Raw played host to the 2011 Slammy Awards, and things started out really ugly when Hornswoggle came out to present the night's first award with Booker T. Earlier this month, Santa granted 'Swoggle the ability to talk, and more specifically, the ability to talk like what a racist uncle thinks black people sound like.

For reasons that are completely unknown to me, and went completely unexplained on Raw, the reformed leprechaun pimp-walked out to the stage wearing an afro wig and proceeded to act in a manner that was just barely on the right side of blackface. The whole thing was made even worse by the fact that Raw was on an hour earlier this week, and could have possibly picked up some new fans, if only it hadn't opened by providing fodder for the argument that wrestling is nothing more than reactionary, exploitative trash.

As if The Bamboozling of Hornswoggle wasn't bad enough, the rest of Raw's first segment got even worse, as someone backstage realized it was time to make a complete and utter fool out of Jim Ross for no reason whatsoever. I've got no real problem with Michael Cole as a heel (though I wish WWE'd take him off commentary), but tonight's segment was just uncomfortable and awkward to watch.

It's pretty much always inadvisable to have two middle aged white men rap battle, but the contest between Ross and Cole was even worse than you can probably imagine, as Jim "Can You Blame Me?" Ross appeared to forget the lines to his atrocious rap, as fans nationwide searched for anything else on the air. And those of us who suffered through it? We were rewarded with the even more embarrassing sight of Ross trying to do a Spinneroonie.

There are only so many moves, spots and maneuvers in professional wrestling, so it's inevitable that things will be repeated from time to time. In fact, the way in which wrestlers riff on established, recognizable moves and bits is an important part of the genre. But in order for that to work, you have to actually acknowledge that history.

Having Mark Henry and Big Show recreate the famous Brock Lesnar/Big Show ring collapse spot wasn't a bad idea - it's a really neat spot and worth recycling. The problem comes from the way in which WWE has decided to completely ignore that the same thing happened once before, and even involved one of the same wrestlers. Ultimately, WWE continuing to play up this moment as if it's totally new won't matter much, as the promotion is really phenomenal at rewriting its own history. But by not mentioning the first time this spot happened, WWE is missing an opportunity to further develop its history and also tie things in with one of MMA's biggest stars.

I was delighted to see the D-O-double-G back on Raw this week, even without braids in his hair or Mr. Ass at his side, and even happier to see him wearing a D-Generation X shirt. In another example of WWE rewriting its own history, recent years have seen the company make a concerted effort to rebrand DX as a tag team consisting of Triple H and Shawn Michaels, which it pretty much never was.

Truth is, though Michaels was a founding member of DX, the version of the stable that most resonated with Attitude Era fans was the one that consisted of the New Age Outlaws and X-Pac. I doubt that Road Dogg is going to be making any kind of real return to WWE programming, or that the company will do anything to change how it's been characterizing DX as a group, but I was still excited to see the guy back on Raw, albeit briefly.