WWE Monday Night Raw 3/5/2012 - The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

The opening segment to this week’s Monday Night Raw made me a little sad. Not because it didn’t have any, you know, wrestling in it – that’s pretty much par for the course, and if you’re not going to start your wrestling show with, you know, wrestling, a promo from Shawn Michaels is actually a pretty good consolation prize. No, I was bummed out because for the second time in about a month’s time, I’ve been reminded of how much I miss having the Heartbreak Kid around.

I’ll admit I got pretty damn tired of that guy his last few years in WWE, but that was largely because of the incessant DX reunions. Fact is, not only is he a tremendous worker, but he’s also great on the microphone. He’s not a world-class talker like the Rock or “Stone Cold,” and he’s not even as good as Triple H, I wouldn’t say, but when he’s invested in a storyline, he pulls you in and is more relatable and identifiable than most anyone else I can think of. Like an old, evangelical redneck Loki, HBK showed up to stir the pot with the whole Triple H/Undertaker thing, and is singlehandedly making me care about the angle. My only problem with it now is that I wish Triple H would just become a full-on heel already. How much more powerful would that segment have been if it ended with a big old Pedigree to Michaels?

Also, it doesn’t really bother me ALL that much – you have to let a certain amount of logic fly out the window when you’re watching wrestling – but who exactly authorized HBK as the special referee in Taker vs. Triple H the Threquel, and how did they keep the Chief Operating Barbarian King from finding out about it?

Ever since Elimination Chamber (maybe even before – it’s past midnight and I don’t have time to dig through the GB&U archives), I’ve been complaining about WWE not doing anything with Santino Marella. He’s the best comedy wrestler in the business today, but unlike most comedy wrestlers, he can actually make fans care about the outcome of the match, not just laugh at it. Moving the United States Title belt from Jack Swagger to Santino was a super-smart move on WWE’s part, as Swagger is going nowhere fast, and Santino is so outrageously over with any crowd he competes in front of.

I was even OK with having the GM storyline grafted onto this match. Sure, I would have liked for Santino’s win not to have been eclipsed by the three dozen other people at ringside, but you take what you can get, and it’s better than having the GM storyline devour a WWE Champion vs. World Heavyweight Champion match like last week. That said, if WWE thinks they needed to combine Santino’s win with the GM story to make people care about it, they are out of their minds, as Santino holds the crowd in the palm of his sock-puppet-covered hand pretty much every time he hits the ring. I might be foolishly optimistic, but I’m very excited about Santino’s title run.

I told you this week's Raw wasn't all good, and the first crack appeared when the Rock, despite actually being in the arena, showed up via a pretape. The pretape was more frustrating than if they hadn't had the Rock show up until the end of the show, as it was just a tease, and was also pretty terrible. If they were going for a full-on Hollywood heel thing here, I'd be OK with Rock's first (that's right, there was more) pretape promo. Rock is supposed to be a face though, and there's nothing heroic or admirable about catchphrase heavy rants that veer ickily close to homophobia, and shouting at some poor guy off-camera.

It's a fair point to make that Rock calling Cena a transvestite and "Rooty Tooty Fresh and Fruity," and picking on camera operators is just what Rock does, and you'd be right, it is what Rock does...back in the early 2000s. Fact is, that stuff just doesn't go over as well for a face in 2012, especially when WWE is ballsdeep in a big anti-bullying campaign. Rock just comes off as mean, hateful and homophobic, which would be fine if that was WWE's intent, but I'd be willing to bet that it's not.     

Call me crazy, but I kind of dug this week’s obligatory Divas match between Eve and Alicia Fox. Yeah, it was a squash, but both Divas (neither of which has a very good track record) put on a high-octane, fast-paced bout with some impressive spots. Don’t believe me? Go find it on YouTube or WWE.com – it’ll take you about a minute to watch it, and that’s actually what’s so great about it. These two aren’t excellent, or even very good, wrestlers – Alicia tends to hurt other people and Eve always looks like she hurts herself – but they used their limited skills in a match that was the exact right length. I like to think it’s all Goldust’s doing in the back.